User talk:Justlettersandnumbers/old

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Note: This page has some older stuff from when I started here until about July 2014. But I often delete stuff from my talk, so it is not complete.

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Hello, Justlettersandnumbers, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Ks0stm If you reply here, please leave me a {{Talkback}} message on my talk page. 16:36, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Horse stuff

HI Just, a quick FYI that if you change names and then delete a redirect on a horse article, make sure you don't create a red link at List of horse breeds and if you do, please fix it. Also, we usually keep the word "horse" or "pony" lower case per WP capitalization conventions unless the word is such an integral part of the name that it is always included..for example, Arabian horse, Morgan horse, but American Quarter Horse. Feel free to ask me or anyone at WP:EQUINE for help if you have any questions, feel free to join us too! Also be super careful about changing horse to pony articles, size alone doesn't always distinguish the difference, and I like to verify that the registry and other official organizations actually express a desire for an animal to be designated a "pony" -- anything less careful can start some really annoying edit wars. (god forbid anyone call the miniature horse a "Pony", for example... =:-O ) Montanabw^(talk) 04:39, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

hi! sorry about the red link, thought I was to search for and fix double redirects and let a bot deal with the single ones; as you may have gathered, I am a novice here. I think you may be right that it should be 'horse'; the AIA lists it as cavallino, which technically means 'small horse', while it uses 'pony' for e.g., the 'Pony di Esperia'. However, this is an English-language wiki, and we do not have a word for 'cavallino'; in Italy, 'pony' is commonly reserved for the Shetland (a word unknown to ordinary Italians), and almost all other ponies, however small, are called cavallo or cavallino (the Bardigiano, Monterufolino, etc.). The Cavallino della Giara is pony-sized, has pony-like structure, and definitely pony temperament! (it is, btw, nothing remotely like a Sardinian AA). It fits exactly this statement from the Pony page: 'The pony originated from original wild horse prototypes that developed small stature due to living on the margins of livable horse habitat. These smaller animals were domesticated and bred for various purposes all over the Northern hemisphere'. In general, many breeds called 'pony' in English are called 'horse' in their native area, the Fjord and Northlands for example. I suspect that there may also be transatlantic differences in the use of 'pony'; in British usage, any horse under 14 1/2 hands is normally considered a pony, at variance with the Pony article, where the height distinction is restricted to competition rules. The word 'cavallino' is part of the name of the breed, so suggest that 'horse' should be capitalized for the Cavallino della Giara (when referring to the animal, its name is given in full, whereas no-one would talk about, say, a 'Cavallo Maremmano' unless there was some risk of confusing it with a cow or dog or person from the Maremma). I'm going to try moving Salerno (horse) to Salernitano, which is the name of the breed; pse let me know if I mess up! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:32, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

• Hi again Just. I appreciate your energy and willingness to dive into this stuff. I'll try to explain a few of the less formal policies that have developed at WPEQ over the years. First off, the pony thing. We adopted the standard at WPEQ a number of years ago (after edit wars across many article pages, much of it before I ever even started editing), that if a breed registry called a breed a horse, we'd do so as well, as the 14.2 standard is not an absolute rule anyway. It is true that for BOTH the US and the UK, the 14.2 hand distinction between horses and ponies is common, but it is NOT universal, even in the UK, for some of the following reasons: 1) Ponies actually have a distinct phenotype, different from horses. So in theory a horse over 14.2 could be of pony ancestry. 2) The FEI actually has a slightly different cutoff, in centimeters, that with shoes is close to 14.3 3) Other English-speaking countries, notably Australia, use a different cutoff (14 h there, I think) 4) -- and most important, IMHO, many breeds have individuals that are both over and under 14.2 and so a breed registry can't really divide itself. Fjords and Icelandics are classic examples of horses where their breed association is quite adamant that they are horses, not ponies, and consider the term "pony" to be an insult to their animals. Breeds such as the Arabian have some individuals under 14.2 but all are clearly of a horse phenotype. 5) We have had edit wars over "horse" versus "pony" status for various breeds, and when in doubt, I lean (though not always) toward the term that will not be considered offensive by aficionados. Those are just a couple of examples. We need to move the little Giara back to "horse" for now, I think it needs to settle there; the source material clearly states that it is a "true horse" -- but we can discuss that particular case in more detail on the talk page. Montanabw^(talk) 04:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
• Second, the Italian breed thing. This is English Wikipedia, so we need to Anglify (if that's a word) these names. In other words, "Cavallo " this and "Cavallino" that just don't make any sense in an English article beyond saying "horse" or "pony" (And Google language claims Cavallino translates as "pony" by the way, not that it really matters and I won't go to the mat for Google translations, though they can be handy!). So just as we say Sardinia and not Sardegna, and Munich, not Munchen, likewise, we have to work on the others. I'm concerned about Salerno to Salernitano, we can most certainly list all names in the "alt" area of the infobox and have redirects from all possible names, but let's remember that this IS English wiki!  :-) Montanabw^(talk) 04:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
• Third, there is, of course, more than just the broad wikipedia policies. We have a few things we do to the horse articles to improve navigability and organization. You might find the hints and guidelines at the horse breeds task force helpful: Wikipedia:WikiProject Equine/Horse breeds. Good luck! Montanabw^(talk) 04:12, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Breed articles

If you want to work on Maremmano, I don't think anyone is all that active with it other than Altes, who seems to have a similar view as you, and would probably be supportive of having improved articles. If you want a template to go by, Dana boomer just got Italian Heavy Draft to GA status, so that's a good example of a small article that is done up to proper wikipedia standards with good layout, reliable sources and all that. We'll keep an eye on how you're doing and comment if you seem to be going off in the wrong direction, but I'm supportive of anyone who actually wants to do some of the work that needs to be done on the 350-400 breed articles we have on wikipedia. Montanabw^(talk) 22:15, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Nice!

Saw the stubs you created, thanks for doing that, and creating a category. Nice job! I added the new category as a subcat of horse breeds, and all the new articles to List of horse breeds. You may want to be sure that I got them all (either horse or pony section). Feel free to add them yourself in the future, and it's also OK to tag your own articles on their talk page as part of WPEQ (WikiProject Equine). When in doubt, importance is "low", and class usually varies with length and number of citations. (stub is easy, start usually = no footnotes, not comprehensive C=longer and getting pretty thorough with a few footnotes, but not many, B=quite a few footnotes, but not ready for GA class yet) I left the Neapolitan in the extinct breeds section for now, because I think we're still sorting out what to do about the "new" breed, though we may ultimately wind up placing it in both sections, with proper disclaimers. I also moved some from capitalized "Horse" to lower case "horse" as all the names appear to designate geographic regions and when referencing the horse breed can stand alone, even if in other contexts it would be confused with people or other animals. The corresponding examples are Arabian horse, Morgan horse, etc... the only time we keep "horse" capitalized is if the name is so inherent to the breed that the other words actually mean something completely unrelated without the word "horse" added (as in, whoever heard of an "American Quarter --" except as a coin?). We also do this because Wikipedia syntax refuses to acknowledge if a lower case letter is used when a title contains a capital, though it has no trouble finding the lower case version if you type in a capital. Go figure....  :-P Montanabw^(talk) 18:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Just a start, an attempt at a framework to get a few things (like my thoughts) in order. The category was intended mainly for my own use initially, to be honest; I wasn't going to add it to Horse breeds until it was a bit further ahead, but if it's OK with you then it's OK with me too. On capitalisation, I suggest that until and unless a proper expert comes forward, you are just going to have to trust me to know when the word "Cavallo" is an integral part of the breed name, and when it is not. Horse needs to be capitalised for the Cavallino della Giara, as you can't talk about a Giara (well, you can, but it is a geological formation, not a horse); similarly for the Cavallo del Catria, Cavallo del Ventasso and Cavallo Pentro, where dropping the word Cavallo would leave you discussing two mountains and a member of ancient tribe. It does not need to be capitalised, or even included, for the Napoletano, Avelignese, Bardigiano, Tolfetano and many others. I have understood your take on this matter, and followed it rigorously. Please remember, I speak Italian and am moderately familiar with usage in this specific area (millions of Italians have never heard of most of these horses). If you have sources that show different usage, please point me to them, I'd be interested to see them. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:45, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

We already have a category for Russian breeds, so once it showed up in the articles, I figured we might as well take it prime time. Once a category has been created, it doesn't go away without a specific request.

But, if I am not mistaken, "Cavallo" just means "horse" correct? And it comes first in Italian grammar, so it would have to be capitalized there. But while I trust that you know Italian, the real issue is translation into English. I think the use of "horse" sounds pretty similar to English language breed names, often called this or that "Horse" or "Pony" (capitalized, title case) as well. Breeds like Thoroughbred don't usually append "horse" because there is only one thing (properly) called a Thoroughbred, but many others do, even when people just call them by their ambiguous title (like the horse breeds called Friesian, Brabant, Arabian, Karabakh, etc...) I personally would not normally have an issue with using title case and capitalizing both words in the real world, but what we have is a wikipedia quirk colliding with the real world. Wikipedia MOS doesn't like title case and it screws up searches because of how the programming doesn't treat capitals and lower case as equivalent. So having title case other than were absolutely critical creates a huge pain in the ass because we'd have to create a redirect to -- every. single. article. Were it not for that...sigh But after we at WPEQ obtained consensus to call breed articles logical things like Morgan horse instead of the silly-but-normal-for-wikipedia-disambiguation "Morgan (horse)", to fight for title case on top of it and then argue over whether half the articles should or should not include the word "horse" as part of the proper name, well, oh god, we have 350+ breed articles! It just is NOT worth it. Montanabw^(talk) 23:58, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

As I think I said before, I understand this point; I'd like to be sure that you do too. You can talk about a Trakehner or an Arab or, well, a Friesian or the other ones you said without adding the word horse, even if with the Friesian you'd sometimes need it to distinguish it from the cow, and with an Arab you'd sometimes need it to distinguish it from an Arab pony. You can't talk about an American Quarter (as a horse, that is, rather than something in numismatics), so American Quarter gets a capitalised Horse after it and Trakehner doesn't. In exactly the same way, you can talk about a Salernitano or a Napoletano or a Tolfetano or a Bardigiano or an Avelignese or a lot of other Italian breeds without saying 'cavallo' before their names, and indeed in most cases to put it there would be quite unusual; those breeds get a lower-case horse after their names here, or preferably no horse at all. But you can't talk about a Catria or a Ventasso or a Pentro or a Giara or an Esperia; the words 'cavallo' or 'cavallino' or 'pony' are an integral inseparable part of the name of the breed, so just like the American Quarter, they get a capitalised Horse or Pony after them, right? If in doubt as to which group a particular breed falls into, please ask; if I don't know, I'll say so. But please be aware that I have been keeping this in mind all along. And if I have to create a few redirects, I will. Removing things from the category I created to keep track of this stuff does not help. Now that the Avelignese has been removed from the horse breeds of Italy, where has it been relocated? Mine was still there when I fed him this evening, I was relieved to see Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:31, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

More in new section below. But here's another idea: Create a "list" article titled something like "Italian horse breeds", such as we have for Iberian horse or Gaited horse and just summarize everything, even the questionably Italian ones, provide both English and Italian names, etc. Maybe it could even be a handy chart such as is used in articles like Equestrian at the Summer Olympics. Much handier than categories, which often have fights over what's in or out and often it's hard to track what is new or what has been removed because the lists generated have no edit history. A list style article would also give you an opportunity to explain the organizations that make these decrees, how the government decides these things, and so on. Montanabw^(talk) 04:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

As for the categories, the search term Avelignese redirects to Haflinger. We generally don't categorize redirects, though I wonder if this is a case where an exception to the rules makes sense. I actually think there may be a special way to do this (It makes the article title appear in italics in the category, indicating it isn't the "real" article title), I'll check some of the other categories and see if I can figure it out. There is an argument to be made that we could have multiple breed nationality categories in one article, I just don't know when it will end. Seriously, as much as European national boundaries shifted around, I'm convinced that at least five different nations could "claim" the Lipizzan, for example. But as for names, just as a halter is a headcollar in the UK, we are not going to create two articles on the same thing, we are just going to note the different names in a single article, and the more popular term is generally used as a title, at least when a dispute arises. (Oh, and there technically is no such thing as an "Arab pony." All purebred Arabians are classified as horses, regardless of height. If it isn't a purebred Arabian, than it isn't an Arabian at all, it's some sort of crossbred with Arab ancestors, such as the Anglo-Arab, Shagya Arabian, etc...) Montanabw^(talk) 04:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I did remove the national categories on a couple of breeds with multiple origins that aren't clearly, 100% "Italian," particularly the Haflinger and Lipizzaner. The Lipizzan is, in fact, the breed article where we have had some rather nasty edit wars with the over-enthusiastic Slovenian (but then, Slovenia actually sued Austria in the EU over the use of the term "Lipizzan"), we also have someone who actually works at the Spanish Riding School IRL and pops in from time to time, and so I just do not want to open up an unnecessary can of worms. Just so you know what's happening. And thanks again for your work on this! By the way, would you like to create similar categories for the Japanese pony and horse breeds like the Noma pony or the Indonesian breeds like the Java pony?) Montanabw^(talk) 18:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

???!? On whose say-so? On the basis of what evidence or publication? Please note:

I think you're missing the point. Breed origin is a complex issue, with many breeds coming from multiple sources, developing over time. Just because a breed exists in a nation, doesn't make it a "national" breed. (Heck, for example, the [{American Quarter Horse exists in Italy, and the Italians even sent reining horses to the WEG and did a pretty good job. Does that make the QH an Italian breed?) Most of the stuff we are debating has footnotes to reliable sources, you need to review them, I'm not going to argue them here. If you want to find better, more reliable ones, you are welcome to do the research. You can also place "citation needed" or "dubious" tags on items you have concerns about. However without sources, a person is just arguing one's own opinions or biases. If you say it's wrong, the burden of proof rests on the person who wants to change the existing content, the people who already did the work to write the material only need to defend what may be questioned. And saying, "you're wrong and I have a source to prove it" means nothing without providing the source. (Google language can at least allow people to take a whack at interpreting a foreign language source). Montanabw^(talk) 23:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

The Haflinger is the most common registered breed in Italy; to remove it from the list of Italian breeds would be simply to display more of the bias which I have already noted in the article. If you can cite a reliable (and, at this point, very authoritative) source that states that the Haflinger is not a horse breed of Italy, please point me to it and I'll remove it. But until then, it should stay.

I'll let Dana explain the article, she did most of the research, and if you want to discuss that particular breed category at the article talk page, I'll defer if the consensus goes in favor of adding it. But just because it's common today doesn't make it an "Italian" breed. It is also, I think, the most common registered breed in Germany. A person has to be careful to not let your own nationalistic bias color your judgement. If we wanted to list it as both a German and an Italian breed, that's possible, but frankly, I hate to start classifying all breeds by nation, for some we have breeds where the next thing you know, we'd have a half-dozen categories all claiming the breed and it would become ridiculous. In fact, I suppose the Austrians could make a good claim for origin too! The article sources speaks for itself of the origins of the breed. Unless something is as geographically obvious as the breeds that exclusively developed within the boundaries of modern Italy, I think it's a can of worms to start the laundry list of nations that can claim a breed. Montanabw^(talk) 04:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The Lipizzaner article needs a major rewrite in the Second World War section. I'm no historian, but there is no doubt that the Lipizzaner stock was divided into three parts by the American forces, of which one stayed in Austria, one went to what was then Yugoslavia, and a third arrived, together with some of the stud books, in Rome in the Spring of 1945. It is a horse breed of Italy; if you've removed it from that category, would you kindly put it back? By the way, I mentioned some of this to the staff at the museum of the Spanish Riding School when I was last there; they hotly denied every word of it, so you can expect them to do so again. But their denial does not make the facts any less true. Those horses arrived in Rome, and are still bred there (well, near there), and a proper genealogical stud book maintained for them (not just a breed register as for most indigenous breeds). Can you indicate a reliable source that states that they do not exist?

Well, you are misconstruing my point. It isn't that the breed doesn't exist today in Italy (while you're at it, shall the Italians also claim the Shetland pony?), it's that it has multiple sources of origin, including Lipica, which was once called Lipizza, and was considered Italian, though it isn't today, and this sort of thing is the problem. A minimum of three modern nations can lay claim to the Lipizzan, and if you count all the stud farms that contributed foundation bloodstock, we probably could add Hungary plus a few others. There are also Lipizzans who were taken to the United States after Patton's Army captured Hostau also, but we don't claim they are an American breed, even though we too have an American registry for them! Your logic isn't working for me here. You didn't appear to read the breed history that shows that there were multiple foundation horses from multiple nations that came together at multiple studs within the Austria-Hungarian empire and were showcased in Vienna. If you can find source material for the formation of the Italian stud book, please provide it, this would enhance the article, actually. (For example see also South African Lipizzaners) And yes, between the Spanish Riding School and the Slovenians, if you want to claim the Lipizzan is Italian, I'm going to guarantee you that it could erupt in an edit war that you will probably lose. Montanabw^(talk) 23:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I have – so far at least – omitted from category the Cavallo del Delta, which is just a population of Camargue horses in the Po valley (scandalous, in my view, that they should be registered as a native Italian breed), and the Cavallo Appenninico, which I know nothing about, but believe to be some Swiss horses brought in about 50 years ago.

Which probably would only upset the French or the Swiss. However, if you created the article stubs, can you add them to the List of horse breeds so they are easier to find? Or maybe add stuff like the Delta horse to the Camargue article? It DOES sound like the Italian association wants to claim everything is Italian in origin! Is this at all connected to that Northern Italy separatist party or anything? Montanabw^(talk) 23:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I didn't even create the stubs for those two, though I will try to look into the Appenninico a bit; there's also one called the Cicolano which hasn't finished getting recognised yet. Note: I don't do politics, dislike those who do, especially dislike those who do on the right, profoundly dislike nationalism; I don't greatly care for personal remarks or innuendo, either, but I've met them before and survived. The horses I'm looking at, including the Lipizzaner and Haflinger, are regarded as Italian by the Italian State, their authenticity confirmed by ministerial decree. That is why the Shetland and Quarter Horse are not (yet!) claimed as Italian. I did add a couple of pre-existing pages about other Italian breeds to the category also; they mostly need serious work. And yes, I will eventually add something about the Camargue and Merens populations in Italy to the pages for those. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:31, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

My apologies on the nationalism remark. I get twitchy, I've run into rabid nationalists on some of these horse articles in the past and they can be a little weird. But, if "the Lipizzaner and Haflinger, are regarded as Italian by the Italian State, their authenticity confirmed by ministerial decree" that's just groovy for the Italian government, but if they really think the breeds are exclusively of Italian origin, then they are full of themselves and exhibiting that very nationalistic fervor that is so distasteful, as both breeds clearly developed in a far broader geographical area than just Italy, though there were areas of Northern Italy that provided some influence. Note this article for example, looks like Monterotondo is Italian, but none of the rest. (Really, I should just introduce you to that Slovenian guy who accuses us of an anti-Slovenian bias on the Lipizzan article and let the two of you just slug it out! LOL!) As for your own Avelignese, do a Google search, the breed is called the Haflinger pretty much everywhere else but Italy. And they are cool little horses -- by either name, they do smell as sweet... (abusing a bit of Shakespeare here for whatever humorous effect I can muster). Montanabw^(talk) 04:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

And no, sorry, any tiny amount I might know about Far Eastern breeds is just the result of reading a few books Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:45, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

All I wondered is if you would be inclined to just create a category for those groups of breeds like you did for the Italian ones. The articles are already written. But if you don't want to, that's fine. I was just glad to see someone interested in doing category work. Montanabw^(talk) 23:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and please discuss the capitalization stuff before you go and move them all back, as there is an existing editor consensus on this issue. Montanabw^(talk) 18:16, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Policy noted and adhered to; would you be kind enough to put back any that have been incorrectly moved? If in doubt, holler! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:45, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll review and if you dispute, we can take them to individual talk pages or if there is a need to change general policy, we can discuss at WPEQ. Montanabw^(talk) 23:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

New section on translation question

OK, I get that you believe that some things in Italian must say "Horse" as surely as in "American Quarter". The best comparison I can think of is Nez Perce Horse, as if you dropped "horse" we'd have Nez Perce, which refers exclusively to a Native American nation and the people there would take great offense if there were considered the same as their horses (though culturally they were in fact noted horse breeders, they created the Appaloosa in its American form). However, I guess keeping titles consistent with WP capitalization standards is kind of the default. I did note that http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15496286 says "Giara" only, not horse or pony, but also lists it with both Lipizzans AND Thoroughbreds as "horses bred in Italy". So go figure. Now, I'm really not trying to be tendentious or a smartass here, but I do wonder about naming conventions when an Italian word is used for a breed name. I note that the Italian wikipedia article on the Arabian is titled Cavallo arabo, however, which would fly in the face of English use, as it literally translates "Horse arabian" and we would never put the name of a nation in lower case under any circumstances--so again, does it.wiki have the same capitalization quirks?? I also notice the Italian Thoroughbred article is titled "Purosangue inglese" (literally translated "Thoroughbred English", yes?) but then in the Arabian article they caption two photos of known-purebred horses as "Purosangue arabo" when obviously they are NOT Anglo-Arabians, thus, being a non-Italian speaker, I can only conclude that Italian must use the same word for "thoroughbred" and "purebred." Similarly, a lot of European languages (notably German) seem to have a word we translate as "breed" that literally translates as "race." So my point: English is not Italian. We respect geographic names and such, but the inclusion of "Horse" or "horse" is really more of a translation question than a rule. Montanabw^(talk) 04:21, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, just quickly:

• I saw that link earlier, thought I might get around to reading the article one day. Seems to me 'Giara' is used adjectivally there, the word 'breed' being understood, thus 'all the breeds but [the] Giara [breed]...'. Their English is anyway not exactly A1, is it? I guess that in the same way if a group of you were standing round a horse talking about it, one might say "she looks like a Nez Percé to me" without risk of confusion.

Scientists are generally not grammarians, and if they are also do not speak English as a first language, it's even more of a problem. I wonder if "scientificese" should be yet another language! --MTBW

• Capitalisation rules and practice in Italian are quite different from English; specifically, (1) Title Case as we understand it is unknown, so book titles etc. have only the first word capitalised, so, say, The Jungle Book becomes Il libro della giungla; (2) names of languages and geographic adjectives are not capitalised, so 'the people of Arabia speak Arabic and ride Arab horses' becomes 'Il popolo dell'Arabia parla arabo e monta cavalli arabi'

• 'Purosangue', pureblood, is used with the meaning of purebred and thoroughbred, though I can't offhand remember seeing it used of anything but Arabs and Thoroughbreds

• an Anglo-Arab is not a purebred horse, being a cross between an Arab and a Thoroughbred, so could never be referred to as 'purosangue'

My point is that if you say "Thoroughbred Arabian" in English, you are speaking of an Anglo-Arab, but Italian seems to use "purosangue" to mean both "Thoroughbred" the breed and "purebred." I was trying to show you how you can't always directly translate something in the exact form... Giara, for example. --MTBW

• it would be very convenient to be able to distinguish breeds from races, but our usage doesn't seem to allow it, they're all breeds whether they have been bred or not. Whereas Italian has no word for breed, so they are all races

Human beings would be offended to be called "breeds," animals may be a landrace, but that isn't really quite the same thing. --MTBW

• thank you for the list idea, probably should have done that instead of a category

Someone did a Russian breeds category too, it's no harm done, but a list can more fully educate people. --MTBW

• at the risk of repeating myself: I know what I am doing, am reasonably familiar with the subject, understand how different languages work (I speak six, read three of them effortlessly), am familiar with the conventions of academic publication etc etc. I'm obviously not familiar with how this wiki works, just picking it up. Would you perhaps refrain from changing things I have done for a while unless they are structurally incorrect, and then take a look in, say, a couple of weeks? At the moment I'm spending more time justifying every word I write than getting the stuff written. And, in general, would you please have the courtesy to (a) think and (b) discuss before reversing edits I have made, just as I do when editing your material? You've stuck two red links back in the Pony article, one of them to a garbage-word, and the Polo pony article was a total mess last time I looked, with repeated text which someone had taken out and someone else, inexplicably, had then stuck back in. I wrote in the recent survey on academic participation here that it seems that some editors are more interested in defending the existing text than improving it, becoming territorial if not proprietorial over it, and that I see that tendency as a barrier to growth of the project. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I hear you about capitalization, but I was making the point that it's not always suitable to apply the customs of one language to another. For example, German seems to have the opposite situation -- capitalize every single noun! I'll grant your language fluency, but we do need to think through how to handle translations in a way that works for both the English language and the quirks of wikipedia's software, which strongly discourages title case. Montanabw^(talk) 22:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

But as for the rest, the rule on wikipedia is edit, revert, discuss WP:BRD, not the other way around ... the burden is on people who are adding the NEW material to justify it. If you make a good argument and provide third party sources to prove it, you will often prevail and your version will become the accepted one. Over time, your work gains the respect of other editors. If you need some time to play with changes, then there are two approaches. One is to "sandbox" changes to small sections on the talk page, and let others comment as you go. However, I'd recommend that if you want to do an extensive rewrite without people jumping in right away, then create a "sandbox" and just import the text there and play with it all you want. Once it's ready for prime time, invite a few people over to see if they have any comments or suggestions, then take it live. For example, I have several sandboxes going at once, here's one of them where I'm working on a navbox template: User:Montanabw/Tack sandbox. Montanabw^(talk) 22:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The bottom line is that wikipedia is becoming more fussy about having verifiable sources and footnotes for articles. The older articles without good sources, like polo pony, need actual research for verification and proper footnoting. Until there is someone willing to do that level of work, it makes no sense to do much significant rewriting, and thus these articles tend to have necessary maintenance done, poor wording fixed or agreed-to misinformation tossed, but not a lot more. Here there was a glitch of some text repeated twice in the lead (probably left over from a cut and paste that wasn't fully cleaned up), stuff like that occasionally gets left in by accident and needs to be fixed, but that's a different issue. You are running into problems because you just charge in, decree that an article is crap but then don't really add much other than replacing others' unsourced material with your own, equally unfootnoted and unsourced. Arrogance doesn't go over real well here. Montanabw^(talk) 22:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

In conclusion, editing wikipedia can be frustrating when you just "know" something to be true (I've ripped my hair out several times on horse articles.) In some places, your comments are well-taken and you will note that many of your edits to various articles were not reverted, but other things we "know" to be true are actually just strongly held opinions, and in some cases, an incorrect "opinion" or one where you are not 100% correct and the topic (such as the concept that any horse under 14.2 is 'always' a pony) is open to discussion. For example, on Pony, you pointed out some weaknesses that were addressed, though your own edits were not all kept in their original form (but some of them were), and the material restored has a purpose: a few red links sometimes have their place, to allow necessary articles to be created at a later date. And in the case you mention there does need to be articles created on both hot walkers and Equitourism--which is a real concept, by the way, and not a "garbage word" (and that sort of tone is precisely the arrogance that is not winning you any friends). On wikipedia there is always room for improvement, but On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Thus if you show up here all full of ego and imply that everyone else is stupid, it just doesn't work. You have to prove yourself by doing quality work, not just criticizing that of other people. Add verifiable material of substance and you won't come across like a biased newbie with an axe to grind. Your new articles on the Italian breeds were a good example of how to win friends. Do more of that. And do more of your substantive improvements as you did on some of the existing Italian breed articles. But your behavior and comments at the Haflinger and Thoroughbred articles were not a good example, you just irritated people. Montanabw^(talk) 22:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Making your "pony" happy

Your Avelignese will be pleased to know that I somehow formatted the category so the redirect goes properly to Haflinger and not to the redirect page. So it can go back into the Italian list in the Italian form of the name. We still can't do this for Lipizzans, as we have a bigger problem there, but at least your pony (calling him/her a "pony" in the affectionate sense) should personally be happier. Montanabw^(talk) 05:40, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

<-- and more talkback at my page--with photos! Montanabw^(talk) 22:53, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Gypsies, Cobs, and...

Don't let my argumentative nature stop you, whatever it winds up being named, the Gypsy Vanner article is DESPERATELY in need of all the help it can get, so as long as you can replace the crap that's in there with solid sources, I'm for anything you can do. I dropped a note at WPEQ inviting additional comment, especially from our other UK editors. We Americans must over-romanticize and then over-price all sorts of things, and these critters are definitely in that camp... most of the previous edits and comments, as you may have noted, were of the "overenthusiastic 10-year-old girl" variety. I think the rest of us have avoided dealing with that article because those who care really care more than seems normal.(!) I will note one thing though: If you are not familiar with wikipedia politics, there are some fierce edit wars that get started over things Irish in general and things in the Traveller/Gypsy/Roma area too. I have never delved into those (being none of them myself), but the assorted blowback gets around. The last thing we need is something that drags that crowd to a horse article, it's the pits when it happens. A final thought; one article where we have had to deal with horse politics, national politics and an ongoing EU lawsuit is Andalusian horse, which has made it clear to FA quality in spite of the politics. Took a ton of work, but was worth it! May be a good sample to steal ideas from. Montanabw^(talk) 23:45, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Probably best to move this here

JLAN, I just reached my limit with your attitude and said so across about three talk pages, but realized that the conversation probably needs to be consolidated here. If you wish to discuss how to be a little more cooperative and collaborative wikipedian instead of the tendentious pain in the rear you've been the last couple days, I can do that. Or not. By the time I log on tomorrow, I will have probably cooled down a bit, but your edits over the last 24 hours or so were not helpful, though your new articles have been. Can't decide whether to strangle you or pat you on the back and say "good job!" Probably both, depending on the article. Montanabw^(talk) 07:56, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Received your message, though apparently you didn't read one of mine (where I explained that I did not in fact delete your talk page stuff, at least not deliberately). I believe your suggestions do have some grounds to be be mutually adhered to. However, please understand that I consider your behavior toward me to be as bad as you seem to feel my attitude is to you. So, it appears we are at an impasse in that department. If you'd like, I'll propose a WP:TRUCE and BOTH agree to just let the past go and agree from here forward that we can be a bit nicer to each other. Will that settle matters for now? Montanabw^(talk) 23:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Thoughts

Hi, some thoughts before you go to lots of work. A couple years ago, those on WP who care about such things jumped all over me and others at WPEQ for having the Equine navbox uncollapsed by default, particularly on the stubs. While I personally think it is visually attractive, I lost that round, and so I guess it's your call there, but don't be surprised. But on that note, we really shouldn't engage in navbox overkill as it DOES add to a cluttered look if there are too many. By default, we put the equine one on all the breed articles because it helps people find other topics, including the list of horse breeds itself. I personally have no problem at present with your addition of the national breeds one, though I think a more elegant solution is to create a list/article and link the list inside the equine template, but that's only my opinion. I think that your new ES navbox should usually stand alone without adding equine too. It could just have a cross-link at the bottom to the equine one and no need for both, particularly as some of the sport ones (saw this at mounted orienteering) could already have others. Anyway, that's my thinking. If you have questions, always feel free to ask me. (in a friendly way!) Montanabw^(talk) 05:55, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I can't get the collapsing to work right. How it's supposed to be is that they are uncollapsed when only one, but all collapse when there's more than one, but it doesn't seem to be working, I'll try it again. Agree on overkill. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that you have to put it collapsed on the individual pages, I don't get template syntax well enough to figure it out, but you can always go find ones that do what you want and steal the markup (that works better for me than trying to parse the help pages!) Montanabw^(talk) 21:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Helpful tags

Thought I'd introduce you to the {{dubious}} tag, which I think would be good for you to use instead of just blanking things. There is also a tag for {{unreliable source}} Both are vastly preferable to just removing or blanking sources. For example, an unreliable source might be correct (even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while, as they say), which is why it probably should stay until someone has time to improve the sourcing. Something that is dubious, no matter how well sourced, should be discussed at the talk page before removal, as maybe the "dubious" designation is just one person's opinion. Anyway, these tags might keep you out of trouble. WP:CITE is good for format of sources, WP:V is good for what kinds of sources can be used. Given that "a" source is better than "no" source, tagging is usually acceptable wikiquette, whereas blanking existing material can raise hackles. Also, sites like Equinekingdom were good enough for wikipedia 4-5 years ago, especially before Google Books really got rolling, so even though it's inadquate now, fixing the refs is just one of those ongoing cleanup projects (and one reason why so many of us at WPEQ have breed encyclopedias handy, to upgrade the sources on existing material. Montanabw^(talk) 22:13, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

More tips for wiki-world

Hi JLAN, I'm really not trying to be a butthead, I'm just a veteran of a lot of wiki-wars and know that sooner or later, certain issues just keep coming around. Some of what I am arguing today I fiercely opposed at the time I first encountered a given policy, but came around later (or just gave up and chose my battles). These guidelines may help you out: One is WP:ENGLISH and WP:NOENG which explains use of non-English sources. It is a slightly open question what to do with English language sources with some inaccuracies, but in real-wiki-work, the solution tends to be to use BOTH English and non-English sources together-- the English source is easily accessible to most readers who care enough to get the gist of the thing, but if they wonder how it differs from what we say in the article, we can point to the foreign language site for clarification. The mainstream press and breed encyclopedias often do screw things up, but the point is that they ARE good enough as far as they go for what they have correct, and we add more complex sources to correct the material they got wrong. Wiki has had some fierce editing spats in the past with people using exclusively foreign language sources to basically argue something that is pure baloney, hence the guidelines linked above. I keep pointing you to look at the excellent footnoting work Pitke did with use of Finnish sources, as virtually on one except for Finns will be able to translate that material.

The other comment I will make is that there is a guideline on wiki that, absent a really good reason, an article started in US or UK English will keep that format throughout. Obviously, if a US English user started London, it is logical to redo it in UK English, (and vice-versa for, say New York) but other than those sorts of things, we just all get good at trying to respect both forms. Ditto for grammatical differences of opinion like hyphens, serial commas, use of single or double apostrophe for quotes, etc. There were extensive debates over all of this somewhere in time, the WP MOS usually reflects this week's consensus (which occasionally changes) and I lack sufficient time or aggravation tolerance to bother fighting those. So when I go through and do things like a hyphen search and destroy, it is because sooner or later a bot will go through and do it anyway... Montanabw^(talk) 20:19, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Snarking less

Please, I invite you to view Appaloosa. We will be taking it to FA in the next few days. It is an example of what true collaboration can accomplish, when the total becomes greater than the sum of the parts. As of today, there are 2,945 articles tagged by WPEQ. Clearly, we cannot tackle all of them at once, but when the team begins to focus and collaborate, good things happen. If you have truly constructive comments to make, by the way, we'd be interested in the views of a non-American reader. Montanabw^(talk) 23:13, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

FYI

I've requested that Neapolitan horse be protected from editing (both of us) until we figure out how to get you to READ what I am doing before you just go on the attack and until we can reach a consensus. I am trying desperately to keep the truce here, and I am also trying to trust that you are honestly reflecting your own understanding. However, with multiple sources saying the breed is extinct, just the fact that the same name is on a modern breed isn't drawing enough of a link to me. I am honestly looking for more evidence...the Equine Kingdom site, which normally is a very weak source, is actually the only source I have found so far that actually draws a link between the old and the new. And also note that too slavish an adherence to sources could wind up being a copyright violation, so finding a balance in how to say things does not constitute OR. Montanabw^(talk) 21:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Be nice to Dana ;-)

Hey, this is a friendly suggestion: be nice to Dana boomer. She's a WAYYYYY nicer person than I! Also about the only person I know who got her admin credentials without running the torture gauntlet challenging route that most people go through to become admins because she is a very diplomatic and good-hearted person. She is probably the best faith person I know, and quite knowledgeable about wikipedia's policies, guidelines, and unwritten rules. It's sometimes a frustrating world around here, and I know I am an easy target for people's wrath (sometimes deservedly), but Dana is a sweetie and while you can debate with her all you want, assume good faith and don't be mean! (You can pick on me all you want, within reason. I have good faith too, but I'm mildly burned-out and horribly anal-retentive, which I know can be an annoying combo!) Montanabw^(talk) 16:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Appy chart

I like that your edit to the chart in Appaloosa made the columns a bit more balanced, the left column was a bit too narrow, but I wonder if the left column is now just a little too wide and sparse-looking? (Probably varies from one computer screen to the next) Most of the chart looks good, but the first two rows, probably due to the slightly longer photos used, look a bit empty. Lower ones look more filled. Not sure if there IS a solution, but if you want to play a wee bit more, just a thought. Montanabw^(talk) 06:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Maremma Sheepdog

Your posts on this topic's discussion page come very close to violating the Wiki policies on civility. Your characterization of the article unnecessarily demeans previous editors. Your use of "citation needed" is excessive. Your questioning the "neutrality" of a piece about a breed of dog borders on the absurd. Moreover, your use of the term "says who" instead of "citation needed" is demonstrative of the civility problem. Wikipedia requires collaborative effort. If you think this or any other piece can be improved, make your best effort to rewrite it. Do not trash other contributors, otherwise Wikipedia will sink to the lowest common denominator. Looking forward to your reworking of the article and the improvements you can make. SilviaManno (talk) 00:55, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Cool!

Good work on the Donkey stuff. One comment, though. English language names, such as "Asinara donkey" are better than the Italian ones like "Asino Pantesco" (which in English would be "Pantesco donkey," correct? Kind of like all the horse breed names beginning with "Cavallo"?). Anyway, I'm not going to make a big deal out of this because I'm just glad work is being done with the poor, neglected donkey articles, but it's been an issue before so thought I'd mention it. Montanabw^(talk) 17:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I used an English name for the Asino dell'Asinara because I managed to find one or two sources that used one. Most scientific literature uses the local name, as you know, from the FAO on down. The rarer Italian donkeys are unlikely to have established English names, though, and to make them up would be, once again, OR. Question: does the feral American "burro" have breed status? If so, suggest splitting the short section on it out of the Donkey article, where you have to wonder why it is the only donkey treated in such detail. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:05, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I honestly don't know. The deal is that it is protected under the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, so it has a unique legal status. On the horse side, we count the Mustang as a breed, as well as the other various feral horses like the Brumby of Australia, but in the horse article we also discuss them separately from the ordinary human-selected breeds due to their historic and longstanding feral status, so it's a gray area. For the donkey article, it may be worth looking into other places where there also are unique populations of feral donkeys and give the section a worldwide focus, if there is one. As for the English names, I wonder if there is an opinion on wiki anywhere as to if translation is inherently OR or merely a helpful thing to do. All of which is just my thoughts, I am mostly just glad you are working on this because it sure is needed. Montanabw^(talk) 18:13, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

On that basis I will split out Burro when I get a chance, look at expanding the feral donkey section a tiny bit (Asino dell'Asinara is supposedly the only feral European breed). But it may not be done immediately. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:37, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Saw a comment seemed to pop into the burro spinoff, though its old (2005). I put in a reply just in case needed. FWIW and FYI, if it matters, burro and donkey aren't really synonyms in the USA, though often used interchangeably because many western US donkeys are burros (burros can be feral or fully domesticated, only the feral ones that can be traced to feral herds that have been around for years get the federal protection), but we have many regular-sized donkeys too. Various spotted asses and what we call mammoth jacks (probably not the Poitou donkey, though) are used for mule breeding, plenty of mules around here. Most non-equine-knowledgeable people in the US think of the 1849-er California gold miner with his "burro" when they envision a real live donkey, hence the confusion, I suspect. Anyway, probably TMI, but just file away in the back of your head if needed. Montanabw^(talk) 18:45, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Copyvio stuff

User:Moonriddengirl is the guru of copyright violation issues. If you have questions, check with her. Montanabw^(talk) 20:00, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

And on a totally unrelated note, good work on the hands article. I toned down the POV a little bit and rearranged a few things, but didn't actually change much. Don't worry about the stuff between me and Peter I, it dates back to 2007 or so, just complete oil and vinegar. Montanabw^(talk) 03:45, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Of interest to you

Given your interest in international/ethnic mounted sports, a courtesy FYI that I noticed these articles wanted to alert you: Yabusame and Jinba ittai. Montanabw^(talk) 03:22, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

And some humor to cool things down a bit. Check this out: http://www.packburroracing.com/, particularly the rules page: http://www.packburroracing.com/pbraRules.html "No Riding: The runner may push, pull, drag or carry the burro. The contestant shall at no time progress except under his own power." LOL!

Dressage cats

Hi, for once I'm not disagreeing with you about something! I actually think you are on a good track to improve the dressage categories, but I think rather than a piecemeal discussion across bunch of pages, it may be worth consolidating the work in one place (like here -- or a sandbox, or whatever). Basically, I like that the main Dressage cat seems to be becoming a consolidated HQ with most actual articles within subbcats. SO... some thoughts. We may want to separate "terminology" into the training concepts (collection, impulsion, etc...) and the competitive stuff (Musical KUR, for example). I'm also wondering where to put stuff like Shadbelly and such... Montanabw^(talk) 23:15, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

BTW, good work on the dressage masters articles. I'm lurking but no worries, this is one where your language abilities and access to European sources are just right for the job. I have some of the 20th century works (Podhajsky, Seuing, Mũsler, Belasik, Wynmalen, etc.) that have analysis of the earlier works, but not the originals (other than Xenophon's book in translation from the Greek). Just an FYI that I'm not always disagreeing with you when you ARE correct! (LOL). Montanabw^(talk) 02:31, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Stone bruise

We have a bigger problem than stone bruise: I think much of this article linked below needs to be spun off into the lameness article, but the editor is, I think a newbie that I don't really want to bite because they are keeping to themselves and not causing any trouble, plus I'm too tired of all the other drama to want to start on a new round, but... Racehorse injuries. Montanabw^(talk) 18:28, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I cleaned out the article but in the future, don't forget to notify the editor in question with the template tag provided in {{copyvio}}.--NortyNort (Holla) 08:27, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

All yours

Number of edits by Altes to the Italian horse breed articles, mostly youtube videos and unsourced commentary. See Special:Contributions/Altes2009. Your call what to do with all that, you're pretty much the lead editor on most of those. Montanabw^(talk) 17:48, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Your insults

"Restoring previous formatting, removed by editor Montanabw, who has been asked on at least three previous occasions not to edit the talk-page contributions of others" This is bull. Only this one particular time have I EVER deliberately changed something you wrote, and here it was only formatting, not content. You have had some other talk page comments get scrambled up due to anything from edit conflicts to computer gremlins to vandals, but I personally have NEVER deliberately changed anything you have written (I've never changed what ANYONE has written!!!) and am very insulted that you think I have. I tried to explain myself previously to you about this, as well. I have really had it with your sheer meanness and constant insults. Maybe you have no idea how obnoxious and flat out cruel you sound online, but let me just say that I have had it with your attitude. Contribute on the issue, stick to the issue, argue the issue as much as you want, but can the insults. Oh, and how about writing some more actual content instead of criticizing everyone else's? It would be nice for you to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem of wikipedia's incivility. Montanabw^(talk) 16:36, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to the Music Theory Project!

Hello there! Just greeting you - saw that you recently updated our page and added your name in our project. As project coordinator, I would like to welcome you and if you have any questions, let me know! --Devin.chaloux (talk) 16:45, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

French

Wanted to thank you for your work on the new French breeds article. Not sure if we need yet another navbox, but oh well, we already have them, so I guess what's yet another one for another nation. But three things, two minor, the third could be another round in our ongoing differences of opinion, but I'm drawing our attention to it now because it's a good faith action on my part, reflecting my sincere views. Montanabw^(talk) 00:12, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Needed somewhere to create some redlinks and get a picture of the size of the problem. We're not allowed (sez who?) to put them in the list of breeds, so this was a quick solution. There should probably be another list of breeds that allows them to be listed whether they have an article here or not. Or move the current one to List of horse breeds with an article in Wikipedia and allow the other to become complete. The complete list should probably have at the very least 1400 entries, as that is about how many are listed by the FAO

The problem is that the "list" used to have everybody and their dog (in a couple cases) on it, stuff even the FAO won't consider. I think a Livestock breeds recognized by the FAO list would be fine, but as they say, who wants to bell the cat? You want to do a horse breeds recognized by the FAO and do all 1400 entries, with piped links to the wikipedia articles we have already, I won't stop you. But the list of horse breeds is primarily a navigational list with some general information, and per WP:LISTPURP, most redlink lists should remain in user space. And FAO list, even if mostly redlinks, could still have a purpose by that criterion. Montanabw^(talk) 20:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

...

1. Can you add your new articles to the List of horse breeds (we have a separate section for extinct breeds)?

Yes, in due course ...

Thanks. By the way, no need to add the List to every article because we have it on the Equine template already. Montanabw^(talk) 20:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

1. You will save others time if you add WPEQ tags yourself or finish the assessments on the WPEQ tag. Basically, it's fine to assess your own stuff, but when in doubt, it's polite to aim low. You can figure out stub, start, C, B, class easily enough from the guidelines, and we do pretty much ALL new articles as "low" importance unless there is an extraordinary reason to have them higher (all the mid and better topics should have already been created)

Yes, in due course ... and yes, I know all that, obviously ...

I just do it as soon as the article is up so I don't forget, but that's just me. Montanabw^(talk) 20:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

1. I moved a couple of your articles from their French name to an English name. I know we've had this spat before, on the Italian breeds, but I really DO think that WP:USEENGLISH trumps unless there is a very good reason (like the Selle Français, which is called that by English speakers as well). As a preemptive move, I invited Tsaag Valren to comment on the Template talk:Horse breeds of France page. He's French, so if the folks there care, that is worth knowing. Montanabw^(talk) 00:12, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

You should probably review your understanding of WP:USEENGLISH again. It does not mean "make up some name that sounds like an English name and use that", but "use the name that is most often used in English-language sources"; bear in mind "Portuguese for Brazilian towns". What sources use the names you have chosen for those two articles? Which by the way I have no particular gripe with. Anyway, to avoid any possible future disagreement, please regard any move you plan of any article I have created, in this project or elsewhere, as potentially contentious and just tag it and list it at WP:Requested moves like anyone else, OK? And I'll do the same. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:29, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Be nice. You've been doing pretty good so far at toning down the snark until the above. We can get through this. But I shall submit substantive changes you don't agree with to the drama boards and let everyone on wiki have their shot at it for a month and a half. (big, dramatic sigh) I wish we could just agree on this somehow. Montanabw^(talk) 20:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

You're right, but Cob normand and Carossier normand are very similar in their history and their use, Carrossier normand is just the Cob normand before crossbreedings with Norfolk trotter and Thoroughbred, so do you think it needs separate articles ? Laetitia Bataille say that "L'origine du cob normand se confond avec celle du carrossier normand" --Tsaag Valren (talk) 12:16, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I really don't know, I'm just asking! As you know, I have less-than-zero knowledge of this topic. I just noticed that the two were treated as separate in a couple of places; and I think Laetitia is treating them as separate too, even if they have common origins. Hmm, I see she does not include thoroughbred among the crosses in the 19th century. Anyway, whatever you think is good with me. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll go with Tsaag also. By the way, we should somehow cross-link Anglo-Norman horse with Norman cob. Maybe move Anglo-Norman to the extinct section of the list if it really is extinct. Montanabw^(talk) 20:56, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Template:Equestrian Sports

I am going to revert some of the changes you made to the template, but before doing so, wanted to give you my rationale behind my changes.

You changed the uppercase "TREC" to the lowercase (but capitalized) "Trec". I think that TREC is correct, since it is an acronym for Techniques de Randonnée Équestre de Compétition. Even in English, the capitalized acronym seems to always be used (see the web site for the British governing body, TREC-UK at http://www/trec-uk.com/ But I may be mistaken, of course. Do you know of any official organizations that spell it "Trec"?

You removed Horseball and Tent Pegging from the list of FEI-recognized, non-Olympic disciplines. Although these two disciplines are hard to find on the FEI web site, they remain the FEI's two bona fide regional disciplines: see http://admin.fei.org/Development/Regional_Disciplines/Pages/Horseball.aspx and http://admin.fei.org/Development/Regional_Disciplines/Pages/Tent_Pegging.aspx I am looking for the link to an article I read a while ago, that said the FEI is thinking of changing their name from "Regional Disciplines" to "Associate Disciplines" or something else, but have not made up their minds yet, which is why they do not currently appear prominently on their web site.

I live in France where TREC and Horseball are a lot more common than in other countries!

WarlanderHorse (talk) 22:09, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Dogeared

Just an FYI that I'm not a pro-ear-cropping person at all, just was trying to keep the tone neutral with my edits. You will note that I added even more stuff from that law review article (one can make the point in NPOV language...) You made some good edits and thanks for the help. Montanabw^(talk) 22:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Pace (unit)

Pace is an obvious anthropic unit. I am at a loss to understand why you think clarification is needed on this. SpinningSpark 17:14, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, can you give me a reliable academic reference that says so? Obviously I have no trouble agreeing that the pace is a human-based unit; but I'm having the greatest difficulty in finding any reference whatsoever that uses the phrase "anthropic units" in this sense; the phrase is used, but usually with quite another meaning. That is what needs to be clarified, I believe. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:39, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

You seem to agree that the pace is within the definition given in anthropic unit but disagree with the terminology and title of that article. I suggest you reach consensus at that article first before addressing the links to it. Or else propose it for deletion. As for papers that use the term, several (not all) of the papers in this search seem to use it that sense although the list is worryingly short. SpinningSpark 19:40, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

JLAN, your wholesale removal of content and links from an article is a little over the top. I'm all for research, but there is a better approach than blanking things and using redirects, which is to improve content. I put a few thoughts on the main article talk page and restored what you removed. 21:44, 27 September 2011 (UTC) Montanabw^(talk) 16:35, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Advice

JLAN, your behavior is becoming increasingly personal in its targeting of articles that I specifically have worked on and I am concerned about this. It is clear that I am willing to work with you when you are reasonable and refrain from inflammatory comments or an abusive tone, as happened on the ear-cropping article, which I started and is stronger for your contributions. You would do far better to do more of this sort of work where you have been a positive contributor who finds sources first and makes positive contributions rather than criticizing the work of others (often others who are no longer active and cannot defend themselves). Just some friendly advice. Montanabw^(talk) 17:32, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Foot / Fuß / voet / pied

Hi Justlettersandnumber,

I have seen your response to my revocation of your changes. Are you happy to leave the foreign Wikipedia references in place for a week or two so that they are markers of work to be done. We can chip away at this together.

Regards Martinvl (talk) 20:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Of course, why not? Only thing is, as I mentioned, I will be away for the next few days. But happy to lend a hand on my return. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

A wise man

Will not put threatening vandalism templates on another user's talk page when the real issue is a simple editing dispute. A simple "citation needed" tag would do. And if you can find Summerhays, he might be the source of the problem, if Hendricks is to be believed. (and while Hendricks is a weak source, she doesn't appear to make it up out of whole cloth) Montanabw^(talk) 23:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Informal warning

JLAN, I'm not going to template you for what you are doing on Andalusian, but you have got to stop this tendentious obsession with height and nitpicking every last detail. You had ample opportunity to examine this article for months, you knew it was there, and to attack it on the eve of it going on the main page in the manner you are taking is just plain rude. I am quite tired of your attitude and behavior and you need to stop it now. You are doing very little to help wikipedia, you are only running down other, respected editors who ahve put in hours of work on these articles and if you cannot be part of the solution, I urge you to at lease cease being part of the problem. Montanabw^(talk) 00:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I am also going to recommend that you read User:Gamaliel/Tips. Seems appropriate, even though you are no longer a new user. Montanabw^(talk) 16:08, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Stop your harassment of Dana and your obsession with the height and measurement templates. You are bullying another user and it is inappropriate. I really don't want to take your behavior to the drama boards, but you really need to quit being such a jackass. Montanabw^(talk) 01:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

She asked you to stay off her talk page. You really should do so. PumpkinSky talk 22:16, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are mistaken. No-one has asked me anything of the sort. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:31, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I did. On my talk page. After your last comment. But I'll say it here too. But as I just did some cleanup there and tossed it all, I'll say it here: Please stay off my talk page. Montanabw^(talk) 18:54, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Relatively uninvolved pair of eyes

Hi JLAN, first, I' d like to thank you for your very kind email which you sent me during that very unpleasant little spat. It was truly appreciated, and very unexpected, and it did make me feel a bit better.(>**)> Hugz for that!

With regard to the history of spats and squabbles, I've taken several hours to look through a lot of them, and through a lot of your contributions, too.

You've made some excellent contributions during your time here, and made some significant improvements as well. However, you do have a tendency to get into spats and squabbles with other editors when you're in disagreement with them, and these spats and squabbles do escalate. I can see irritability and rattiness on all sides, not just from you, and I've really tried very hard to get into the roots and find out what's been going wrong, where. Once any of us has a history of disagreements with others, it's very hard to dissociate the "current spat" emotionally from the history of previous spats, so everyone is bringing months'-worth of old emotional baggage to each spat. This is just human nature, and it's incredibly hard to stop ourselves from doing this kind of stuff. It's part of being human. I have a lot of sympathy for everybody involved in these disagreements; it's all emotionally-wearing stuff, and unpleasant for all concerned.

Having said that, it does seem that you're very often outvoted, outnumbered, and consensus clearly against you, in these spats and disagreements. I think part of the history of problems is that you appear to find it difficult to accept when this is the case, and continue to argue your point long past the time when it should have been dropped. It appears that this is where all the irritability stems from, both your own irritability and that of other editors. There has been fault with rattiness and bits of snark and name-calling on both / all sides, but I have yet to find a case where the degeneration-into-spat has occurred from any other cause than you failing to accept that you have been outnumbered, consensus is against you, and you should quietly drop the argument and back away.

My advice to you would be to take a couple of days' break from editing when you find yourself outnumbered, just to give yourself time to simmer down again and recover from the fact that consensus was against you. Some people find this much harder to do than others; it's all part of the variety to be found within humans. Also, try your best not to drag old disagreements into new places; when you've found that consensus is against you on a subject in one place, do try really hard not to go back into the same, or same type, of arguments in another place just to see if it will work on a different page. This is indeed very irritating for other editors. And for you, too! It just brings all that old baggage and all its associated emotions and angst up to the surface again.

It's possible that some of what you're doing isn't as apparent to you as it is to others, but on the surface it does have the appearance of you perpetuating your own private war of attrition.

I most strongly advise you to avoid the subjects of horse height measurements, and of which-breed-society-is-right, or which-breed-society-is-the-original (and the associated "the original one is the only one worth listening to"). These seem to be your major bones of contention, and if you cannot avoid them of your own volition, you may find yourself under an official topic ban on them, which would be a shame, as it might prevent you from making those really helpful contributions which you do make. A topic ban on "anything to do with horses, broadly construed" would severely restrict your editing here, and force you to find other areas to focus on. It would be better for everyone if you could self-impose the heights and breed societies thing, before it is forced upon you.

I really do hope that avoiding these areas will wind down all the old history of spats and squabbles, and allow everyone to take a breather and recover. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 10:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

January 2012

Your recent editing history shows that you are in danger of breaking the three-revert rule, or that you may have already broken it. An editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Breaking the three-revert rule often leads to a block.

If you wish to avoid being blocked, instead of reverting, please use the article's talk page to discuss the changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection. You may still be blocked for edit warring even if you do not exceed the technical limit of the three-revert rule if your behavior indicates that you intend to continue to revert repeatedly. —slakr^\ talk / 00:41, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for this. Would you mind giving me some hint as to where you think this might have taken place? Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:01, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Moved Stone (imperial mass) to Stone (unit)

Hello JLAN. See the result of the move discussion at Talk:Stone (imperial mass)#Move? Let me know if I missed anything. The article at Picul might need further revision by editors to integrate the merged material better. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 14:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I saw. Thank you very much for handling that. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:19, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Chicken coloru list

Thanks for the notification. I will attempt to help expand it, however the major problem with compiling such a list is that the name used for a colour varies between countries and breeds. For example, one colour, partridge, is called dark in the Brahma breed, but it is called partridge in Wyandotte’s. Such occurences would have to be noted. Anjwalker ^Talk 01:10, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Haflinger

Hey Justlettersandnumbers, the article uses at least a dozen times South Tyrol, why would you start to use Alto Adige in the last paragraph? That's simply confusing for readers. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style strongly recommends consistency within articles. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 20:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism

Can you please explain the vandalism you believe you're seeing here? I don't see anything that would qualify as vandalism, but I may be missing something. Be aware that false accusations of vandalism is uncivil and can be construed as a form of personal attacks. You can respond here to keep the thread together, I've added your page to my watchlist so I'll see it. Dreadstar ☥ 21:25, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi, there! Well, I think my edit summary read something like "test edit? vandalism?", and was intended more as an expression of total mystification than as an accusation. What I saw was the sudden removal of a large proportion of the article, including ten or so edits by the poor soul who is so generously trying to review it, and a good deal of relevant material I'd added myself, and some format errors that I was trying to fix. Later I saw a sort of justification by User:Montanabw on the talk page. Whether or not such behaviour on her part is normal in this wiki, or could in itself be construed as uncivil, I wouldn't know; I've seen it before, but only from that same editor. But in general, yes, I consider the motiveless mass removal of relevant and carefully referenced information to be vandalism. Anyway, she's now filed an ANI, so doubtless all the knots will come to the comb. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:10, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the edit summary she wrote was very clear on why that content was removed. It appeared that your edit was attempt to revert war the material you added without consensus - the "normal in this wiki" is supposed to be Wikipedia:Consensus In the future, I'd refrain from showing your "mystification" by adding edit summaries like this one, and if someone reverts you, then hash it out on the talk page. Much safer that way... :) Good luck with the AN/I... Dreadstar ☥ 00:15, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I find it very concerning that you immediately disrupted an article that Dana Boomer put up for GA; from a quick look at the editing history, it does indeed appear that you are wikihounding her, regardless of your true intentions. Also I must agree with Ealdgyth's comment here that your statements about Dana on AN/I are inappropriate and should be struck, I think they are not only uncivil but are very close, if not crossing the line to being personal attacks. This coupled with the above false vandalism accusations, make it look like you have a grudge against both those editors and are intentionally hounding them and causing disruption. If this continues, you risk being blocked and possibly banned from certain articles and restricted from interacting with those editors. I'd strongly suggest you strike the comments you made about Dana Boomer and restrict yourself from even the apperance of following either of those editor's editing. Dreadstar ☥ 00:07, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

And no, it is difficult to believe that you were unaware of Dana's intention to nominate the article for GA before you started editing it, as you state here, she clearly stated that here and here before your first edit there. Mainly, though, your disruptive edits were made after the nomination. Even if this was not intentional, you can surely see how it looks. Dreadstar ☥ 00:41, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

ANI filed

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Montanabw^(talk) 21:30, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Justlettersandnumbers. I've just posted on the ANI. I was wondering if you and Montanabw could try and keep out of each others way, I've just posted a note on her talk page and I'm wondering if you can try to do the same too. Also, since Dana boomer is feeling harassed by your recent work, it would be a good idea to leave her nominations and work alone for a bit too. Do you think that's something you could do? Worm^TT · (talk) 11:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

In principle, yes, of course, no problem. Actually, that's more or less what I've been doing since the last round of aggression from montanabw - see pesky's advice to me higher up. I wrote some articles on Italian chickens, Italian mediaeval scientists, etc. I returned to wikiproject equine when I saw that another editor, Parkwells, had managed to make some edits that were not instantly reverted, but (I think?) I still stayed away from horse breed articles, which are my main interest here. The pig thing was an extremely unfortunate coincidence. In practice? That's a little harder. If you're asking me to stay away from the horse project completely, I'll do it; but somewhat unwillingly, as to my mind that would serve to reinforce the ownership claim of montanabw and her tag team. That said, I am open to any sort of compromise or solution, provided it gets this monkey off my back. I plan to post my own suggestions for the future of the horse project at AN/I during today. Thanks for your interest, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:30, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd suggest keeping away from horses for a bit in any case - at least to let things die down. I don't however see that a formal ban is needed anywhere at the moment, I think we're quite early in the process of escalation. Pesky's advise above is good, it might be a good idea to focus on de-escalation, and keep in mind that you should comment on the content, not the editor, and I think you'll be fine. If you ever need anything, you know where I am. Worm^TT · (talk) 11:38, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm happy to agree to something of the sort, provided of course that the other two editors do the same. I believe it would clearer if a specific period were agreed for all three. I'll abide by whatever you agree with them. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:54, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

JLAN, is there any way I can help, at all? Just with maybe things like "how the other person sees it" kind of stuff? I'm sure you mean well, and you do some seriously good stuff. But I think that part of the problem is that when you see yourself, and the way you put t hings, as being assertive, and firm, and so on, you may not realise that for the person on the receiving end (and for people reading it) what it actually comes across as is bullying. I'm pretty sure you don't actually mean to bully people, and you might be quite horrified to realise that that is how you come over. I'd really like to try helping you steer into a slightly "softer" approach with people. I "know" Worm, he's a good egg, and we get on OK with each other (we've worked together in non-article space for quite a while). I think part of the reason Montana finally got really fed up is that Dana is a very gentle person, and just can't take the "strength" of what you've been doing, and Montana felt (and I tend to agree with her here) that Dana needed someone else to step in and protect her. I'm sorry if it really shocks you that people might think that others need to be protected from you; I'm sure that's not what you mean to be. I used to have a lot of trouble with "being too intense" until I learned (from someone else!) how I was coming across; I'm a high-functioning autistic, so I've literally had to "learn" it; it's not hardwired-in instinctive. That's actually partly why I think it may be possible that I could help. (>**)>Hugz (hugz to Worm, too).

Ummmm, final note; things like referring to "the ownership claim of montanabw and her tag team" really doesn;t help. We're not a tag team, Montanabw doesn't "own" WPEQ, she's actually a tremendously good collaborative and helpful editor; she mentored me through my early days in WPEQ despite me obsessing about things, and she and Dana and Kim and a few others inspired me to produce History of the horse in Britain. I think you're probably just misconstruing the WPEQ team's collegiality (if that's a word). Pesky (talk) 09:51, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey JLAN. I've put some thoughts and suggestions up at ANI. Please do have a look and let me know if there's anything you disagree with. Worm^TT · (talk) 15:00, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I saw. Many thanks indeed. I accept your suggestions with pleasure. I've not yet said so there because I feel that there's quite a lot of stuff I still need to sort out with montanabw, and I'm not sure whether to try to do that there or in user talk. My preference would be for there, under the eyes of the community, but perhaps the community has had enough of our antics? What do you advise?

Is it reasonable for me to ask the horse project to discuss adoption of a local civility policy, such as we have at Wikiproject Music Theory? If so, what would be the right way to initiate such a discussion? To be honest, I don't think it would make the slightest difference to any of the other editors, but might over time help to restore a more pleasant atmosphere there. I'm very aware that users such as Ealdgyth have distanced themselves from the project because of the constant argument, and would like to see that tendency reversed.

I'd like to thank you for the considerable time and effort you've dedicated to this, and the balance you've brought. Frankly, I wish I had met more editors like you when I came here. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:04, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear it. I notice Montanabw had an additional request that when Dana boomer nominates an article for GA or FA, you take concerns to the talk page rather than edit the article. I don't see any problem with that, and wondered if you'd mind agreeing to that too. As for stuff to sort out with Montanabw, I'd certainly suggest it not happening at ANI - ANI is meant to be for incidents, which need urgent administrator intervention. I'm not 100% certain what you'd need to sort out with Montanabw, if I'm honest.

As for the civility policy or any other large scale changes to the equine wikiproject, I'd would put them in the "bad idea" pile. The fact is that there is no consensus that there is a general civility problem in that project or that the problem there extends beyond you and Montanabw (the "constant argument" seems to revolve around the pair of you, individually or together). As I suggested, perhaps it'd be a good idea to try working in another area of wikipedia. Worm^TT · (talk) 13:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Not sure if you watched my page or not...

But I replied. With some well meant advice. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:23, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

A Sam Cooke song for you!

	A Sam Cooke song for you!
	Dianna has given you a Sam Cooke song! Sam Cooke songs promote wiki-love and help editors cope when they are discouraged. Here is your Sam Cooke song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbO2_077ixs Dianna (talk) 17:41, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

... and a Monkees one, too

... and I remember when this first came out, though I didn't realise what it meant at the time. I think I understand it better now. Best wishes, Pesky (talk) 13:30, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Serraglio

Hallo Justlettersandnumbers,
I did not remove any references, just reordered them. Moreover, I reinserted he info that the word is an Italian one. The reordering was necessary since serraculum, in its original meaning, derives from serrare, which comes from sera, and this was not clear from the text. See for example the Georges-Calonghi dictionary about that. Alex2006 (talk) 04:41, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

No, you didn't remove references, you removed referenced material - the statement from Chambers that the derivation from saray results from confusion. If you have a reference for the derivation of serraculum it would be good to insert it (I don't have that dictionary). As it stands, what you have written is WP:SYNTH. You might also read up on BRD (see below). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:49, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Ghetto

Hallo
It's me again. I want to point out again that delli is not a misspelling, but plain ancient Italian. So you cannot "correct" it, exactly as you should not correct Dante`s Commedia, or I should avoid correcting Shakespeare's english. I put as reference an 18th century Rome guide, but I could use my copy of De Rossi of 1697, or a map of Rome of 17th - 18th century. And now a general remark: if you think that something on wikipedia is wrong, and change it, and someone other does not agree and reverts your change, you should start a discussion based on the original version, not revert it again. This process is called BRD. Thanks, Alex2006 (talk) 05:43, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

You should probably take a look at WP:Manual of Style/Spelling#Archaic spelling, which reads in part "Older sources use many archaic variants (such as shew for show), which are not to be used outside quotations except in special circumstances (for example, quire may be used instead of choir in architectural contexts)" and may help to explain why our article on Shakespeare is not written in Shakespearean English and why it is not appropriate to use "plain ancient Italian" (which by the way that is not, degli and deglj being common 16th-century spellings) in this article. But this should now be moved to the talk page of the article. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:49, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Please look in to this again

Dear Justlettersandnumbers, I saw your edit in the article Jayen Varma created by me. I agree that RecordSetter is an approved organisation by WP while Record Holders Republic is not a recognized organisation according to WP. But many other articles in WP have included Record Holders Republic's links. I have included the record only as an additional information. Many news papers have published such information too. So please be kind enough to replace the line which you had removed as an additional information. Thanks a lot. --Musicindia1 (talk) 01:21, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi! I see that you found the discussion of this. My personal opinion: adding material from poor sources reflects badly on Wikipedia and badly on the topic of the article. He's perfectly notable and interesting without a bogus certificate from some beer-swilling Brit (a category to which I too happen to belong). Do you agree? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I agree to your opinion about the notability of the person and about adding materials from poor sources unnecessarily. I saw your opinion on the discussion page too. What do you suggest? Do you want me to remove the information about RecordSetter also now? Or should we wait for the consensus in the discussion? If I remove the said information about RecordSetter from the article, can I add the links of RHR and RecordSetter just as external links? Thanks--Musicindia1 (talk) 06:26, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I think that would be covered by WP:BLPEL: "Questionable or self-published sources should not be included in the "Further reading" or "External links" sections of BLPs". But it'd probably be better to continue this on the Reliable sources noticeboard where other people are more likely to see it. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:46, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I will wait for a favorable consensus. Thanks--Musicindia1 (talk) 13:08, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Gathorne Robert Girdlestone

Greetings to you, Justlettersandnumbers. Thank you so much for starting and assisting with Professor Girdlestone's article.

A man who effectively revolutionized orthopedics and moved human and animal surgery forward a very long way, and saved the lives of numerous animals which would otherwise have had to be euthanized through loss of mobility, deserved to be included.

As and when my time permits, I will get onto adding much more. Right now though, Ramadan is taking its toll on me, and I am having difficulty even thinking straight!

Regards to you, Bashir-ibn-john (talk) 22:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Manners

Your snarky attitude is not helpful to the projects and articles you are working on, so please tone it down. You are capable of solid contributions, but your attitude, particularly in edit summaries, gets in the way of winning friends and allies. Phrases like "nonsense" are unnecessary and, quite frankly, inappropriate. I know you are an adult and not a troll or an adolescent, so please avoid sounding like a troll or an arrogant youngster. Montanabw^(talk) 16:50, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I am not prepared to take advice on manners from you; nor indeed to pay the slightest attention to this or any other personal remark you may choose to make about me. Nor do I require any comment from you on the quality or otherwise of my contributions to the project. If you write ungrammatical nonsense such as "The horse ... is designed to help the horse as a prey animal", you should expect it to be described as such. That such nonsense should creep into an article by mistake is regrettable but understandable. That you should revert the efforts to remedy it of a well-intentioned editor on the pretence that the gibberish was the result of an intentional "nuance" is just pathetic. You might like to ask yourself whether it might also appear to others to be more than a little dishonest. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:26, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Justlettersandnumbers. You have new messages at Montanabw's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

No need to post both places, I'll see it. Montanabw^(talk) 18:52, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Un piccolo gesto di solidarietà

Ciao, JLAN! I see that this user has created a lot of sections on your talk page, many of which seem intended to reprimand you for not doing things the way she thinks they should be done. I'm sorry you've had to interact with her so much, and for so long. I've recently been insulted by her too, and was (strangely) relived to see that I'm not the only one. She seems to think that she has some kind of authority over other users, and when that authority is challenged, she reacts like a tyrannical child. When her intimidation is resisted with sound arguments, she hides behind Wikipedia policy. (And then, the hypocrisy of her giving you advice on manners! Che ridere! ) Anyway, I only meant this message as a small gesture of solidarity. I wish you buona fortuna in your continued work on Wikiproject equine! 75.27.42.188 (talk) 23:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

And I watchlist the talk pages of my favorite editors too! Montanabw^(talk) 23:04, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Grazie, apprezzo molto il gesto. Hai indovinato proprio bene, fa ridere davvero. Ma chi se ne frega? Come ha detto non-mi-ricordo-chi: 'Coraggio, il meglio è passato'. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 02:06, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Category:Archaeological terminology

What "apparent consensus" at CFD? Most of the entries added so far should not be. Assemblage (archaeology) and Archaeological association may fairly be called "terminology", but others may not - there is no special archaological meaning. Agora and amphora are just words for types of thing archaeologists are interested in. You might as well include spade. And so on. Johnbod (talk) 23:47, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Ermm, did you read the discussion? That (actually quite clear) consensus. I think Agora is a term used in archaeology; but if you are sure it isn't, do please go ahead and remove it from the category. Others too, if you like; I just added a few of those suggested by another editor. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:06, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

No, of course I hadn't, which is why I asked. I've commented there, but 3 supports, 1 oppose, 1 delete is not exactly clear consensus, & you should have waited for the close. Of course Agora is a term used in archaeology (just like spade or ring), but that does not mean it should be in the category. Johnbod (talk) 02:46, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, fair enough. And yes, maybe I should have waited. Please act as you wish. I have to admit to a profound accidie in relation to the topic. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:10, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Ok, apologies if I sounded snappy. One other good reason for limiting the scope is that it would reduce the potential size of the category from a 4 digit to a 3 digit number. Johnbod (talk) 12:50, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

No problem, really. And yes, a fair point, though in general I think an over-populated category is preferable to no category at all. I'm just faintly curious to see how the deletion discussion ends. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:58, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks for your clarification which helped me understand Wikipedia better. SarahPML (talk) 21:51, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, thank you! Have fun here! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:50, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	For your excellent work clearing up the confusion with Saint Martin's School of Art Central School of Art and Design and Central Saint Martins. Theroadislong (talk) 20:02, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you indeed! I'm truly honoured. The job is by no means done yet, but I think the end is in sight at last. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:21, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Template: COI Editnotice

Hi Justletters. I noticed you've been using the template I've been slowly pushing through the Wikipedia bureaucracy for about a year now. Based on consensus in the Village Pump back in March, the template is starting to be deployed on a trial basis.

I was wondering if you had an interest if you could take a look at this page. This is what pre-loads when a COI editor clicks on the "Click Here" button in the template to request a correction or suggest content. A lot of PRs that use it are making really crappy submissions and I don't know if that's the template's fault necessarily or if there is a better way to set it up.

Eventually I would like to replace it with an AfC-like Wizard. Anyways, if you have time to look at the pre-loaded Request Edit, I'd be interested in your thoughts. CorporateM (Talk) 13:16, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Hey, if you have any interest, I am also working on a Q&A on paid editing for the Signpost here and would be interested in any thoughts. CorporateM (Talk) 15:16, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank-you

Thanks for the work you've being doing on some of those articles with 'Dr' and 'PhD' in them. I quailed somewhat at the sheer number, but it was great to see someone making a start. Some of them did look suitable for nominating for deletion (or using PROD or CSD), and I see you've been doing that as well. How far down the search list did you get? Carcharoth (talk) 23:58, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, I saw your post and thought, why not? I fear I didn't get very far at all. I was doing 20 at a time, because a longer list was too daunting. I think I might have gone through 5 or 6 pages of 20, of which not quite all were positives. As you have noticed, some had other problems too, and those took more time. I might do some more tomorrow, but right now I'm off to sleep. 'Night, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:16, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Guy Huygens

Good work there. I've blocked the whole lot of sockpuppets and have also semi-protected the article for a month. De728631 (talk) 18:29, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for sorting it. Any credit should go User:Anne Delong, who noticed the thing with the Franks. Is it worth giving fr.wp a heads-up on this also? These and I think other Franks have been active there too. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:41, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. I've contacted Pyb at his Commons account. He's an admin at the French WP. De728631 (talk) 19:37, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:53, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Sort of related

And snark aside, my JSTOR account won't let me at this source other than the abstract. Any chance you can dig up the whole thing? I'm also putting in word with my friendly local librarian to see what magic can occur there... Montanabw^(talk) 00:01, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

MAINTAINING A LANGUAGE OF CULTURE: OUTCOMES OF MEDIEVAL IBERIAN SHIFT AS A PREDICTOR FOR SPANISH IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST YASMINE BEALE-RIVAYA American Speech , Vol. 86, No. 4 (WINTER 2011), pp. 415-440 Published by: Duke University Press Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41485393

No, sorry, I only get the abstract and the bibliography. Suggest trying it at Resource requests. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:10, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

OK sounds like we are in the same boat here. If my librarian can't dig it up, I'll try that. The Arabic roots of some aspects of Spanish horsemanship is quite interesting to me, and tracing the link from the Islamic world to Ancient Persia is particularly fascinating. Should you run across more and better sources than Bennett (who seems to be the only person who has researched this much), I'd be interested in knowing about them. Montanabw^(talk) 17:55, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, I have to hand it to you, it takes a certain kind of bright bloody brass neck! You spatter me with noxious bile each time we meet, and yet here you are asking for help? That said, if you need any assistance in looking up Arabic words in reputable dictionaries, I am happy to oblige; I have Wehr and Al-Fara'id, and can access Lane online. I don't have any great difficulty in reading them. You may find the DRAE useful; it gives, for example, the slightly perplexing derivation of Spanish: jáquima, "halter", from Arabic šakīmah, "bit", which is currently unreferenced in some of our articles. My Spanish is not good, but I am happy to answer questions (when I can) on the meaning of entries there. I can't see any of it online, but I have wondered if A dictionary of New Mexico and southern Colorado Spanish by Rubén Cobos might be helpful in this area if it gives etymologies. This review of Smead's book lists the sources he worked from, some of which might perhaps be of use. I personally would use the Online Etymology Dictionary with great circumspection and only for hints on what to look for in more reliable sources elsewhere, and would discount Bennett completely; her witterings on the topic of horse domestication would have been quickly and rightly reverted as OR here, and I see no reason to trust her more on other topics. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:10, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so sometimes I figure that if something passes your muster, then it's pretty unassailable. And, from my perspective, you splatter the bile first, I only respond due to the insults. And Bennett does not "twitter," (see, that's the stuff you do that pisses people off) though some of her conclusions I disagree with - or they have simply been written in the 1990s and subsequent studies have improved our knowledge. But nonetheless, thank you. Montanabw^(talk) 00:45, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

If you are interested, I did get the full text of the above article, my librarian gave me the following advice: "Several databases showed up as offering access to this journal, but with varying coverage dates. I chose the e-Duke Journals Scholarly Collection database as their coverage was from 2000 to present. Once I clicked on this link and was directed to the database, I searched the article's title and retrieved it immediately." If you want a copy, email me, I'd be glad to send it to you. (Haven't read it yet, looking forward to doing so). We DO spat, but I believe you are dedicated to finding solid source material and there is little enough content editing here as it is. So where there is a place to collaborate, I'll collaborate, regardless of personality issues. Montanabw^(talk) 20:46, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that stuff is usually easy if you have access to a university or good public library, which unfortunately I no longer do, and damned near impossible if you don't. Thanks for the offer, but don't send it right away, thanks - I already have more to read than I know what to do with. Please do however feel free to ask if at any time you need advice on the Arabic side of things, or need a correct transliteration or anything. Witter, by the way, is a real word, of ancient origin but modern usage. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:39, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

The online world is a wondrous thing; I've pulled up a lot of stuff via contacting various libraries directly. My connection to the local college gets me access to even more things. Montanabw^(talk) 00:37, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

And definition 2 of the verb form appears to indeed be the inspiration for Twitter! Montanabw^(talk) 00:37, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Catch-22

JLAN....an interesting catch 22. Maybe you can help me to understand. The International Society for Emergy Research, after reading the terrible entry regarding emergy, asked that I as it's historian write an article for the Wikipedia. I did as they requested. As a scientist who has spent the last 30 years researching in the field of emergy it was felt that I had the perspective necessary to write such an article. I am now told that I cannot write such an entry because I am too close to the subject. It seems that writing for an encyclopedia subject should come from experts in that field. How do we get around this catch 22? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mtbrown8 (talk • contribs) 23:28, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

(talk page lurker weighing in) Mtbrown8, you have my sympathy, to some extent, but let me explain. Basically wikipedia has this policy for two reasons. The first is the no advertising policy on wikipedia. Paid editing flies in the face of this policy. The second is that all information on wikipedia should be sourced to reliable, verifiable, neutral third-party sources -- the No original research policy of wikipedia happens to be one that JLAN and others take very seriously. Things likepeer-reviewed scientific journals are ideal. (And if you have written and we can cite to these sources, that is helpful to us, by the way) Finally, there is what I call the On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog problem. We have many people who edit wikipedia and claim they are someone who is an expert, but they actually are the guy who is 42 and still lives in his mom's basement. (Not saying you are, but we run into a lot of self-proclaimed "experts" around here...) The way out for you? Place your concerns on the talk page of the emergy article, and if you have a suggested draft or ideas for fixing glaring errors, perhaps an interested editor (like JLAN) can look at it and implement your suggestions. Think of it as mentoring us as we improve the article so that it is accurate. Does that make sense? Montanabw^(talk) 16:49, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

In case anyone cares, I've started a discussion of this at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Emergy. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:55, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

September 2013

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• experiences in Korea, with his own illustrations, in the [[Hachette]] periodical ''Le Tour du Monde]].<ref name=tour/>

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Tino Caspanello

Because he was born in Italy. People born in Sicily are Italian. Italians are an ethnic group. See Italians. "Sicilian" indicates a place. It indicates neither a nationality nor an ethnicity. I don't have problems. I respect the NPOV policy of Wikipedia. I classified them as a vandalism because the same IP user was responsible of similar changes and for the reasons I told you above. Greetings --Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 00:15, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

You are quite wrong. People born in Sicily consider themselves Sicilian. They have Italian nationality, but are ethnically and linguistically quite distinct. This is recognised by the Italian state, which allows Sicily the status of an autonomous region. Regardless of whether you are wrong are right, you need to establish consensus for your edits, avoid describing the perfectly correct edits of other editors as vandalism, and probably look for a quite different area into which to direct your energies, preferably one in which you have some knowledge or experience. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:29, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

You are quite wrong too. Also people born in Texas or in Paris may consider themselves as texan or parisian. I'm from Sicily, and it is not so common that a Sicilian consider himself Sicilian before Italian. You are wrong on the ethnicity, because it's known that the Italians are an ethnic group. Sicily is an autonomous region for cultural (like the language) and political reasons. The edit you are talking about was made before my undo. Maybe the IP user needed consensus. I study sociology. This is my area. I follow the NPOV policy of Wikipedia as I told you. I support the truth. The term at the beginning of the biographies points out the ethnicity or the nationality and not the birth place. --Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 00:42, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Walter J. Roterlmeyer is correct here. WP:OPENPARAGRAPH says that we should mention nationality, but not ethnicity or former ethnicities unless the ethnicity plays a substantial role in why the person is notable. This is a pretty important rule, because it stops people from endlessly fighting about how to describe people, as it sets a pretty easy to follow standard. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I perfectly agree. In fact it says: "Ethnicity or sexuality should not generally be emphasized in the opening unless it is relevant to the subject's notability. Similarly, previous nationalities or the country of birth should not be mentioned in the opening sentence unless they are relevant to the subject's notability." This is what I consider in my edits. For Instance: Petrarch is one of the most important fathers of the Italian Culture (so the term "Italian" is relevant to the subject's notability); Tino Caspanello is Italian because Italy is the country of which he is a citizen, national or permanent resident. This is what the WP:OPENPARAGRAPH says: In most modern-day cases this (location, nationality, or ethnicity) will mean the country of which the person is a citizen, national or permanent resident. In all my edits I consider the Opening paragraph rules. --Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 04:09, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Qwyrxian. I respect and value your opinion, and agree that I was wrong here, though not for the reasons Rotelmayer gives ("Italian" is a nationality, not an ethnicity; "Sicilian" is an ethnicity, but not a nationality). I also agree that WP:OPENPARAGRAPH says just what you say it says. However – in a spirit of enquiry rather than argument - it seems that nobody takes the blindest bit of notice of it, particularly in articles regarding people from the United Kingdom. This search throws up just under 37,000 articles that contain the phrase "was an English" (I also get over 8000 hits for "was a Scottish", and about 1200 for "was an African American"). Of course not all of those are biographies, and some of them are biographies of people who were born in England when England was a nation. But what about the others? Just to take a single example, why is this British writer described as "Scottish"? That certainly is neither his nationality nor what he is known for. I'm afraid I can see no intrinsic difference between that and regarding Caspanello as Sicilian. I note with interest that the guideline on stating nationality is carefully sidestepped in articles such as Edmund Blampied and James Saumarez, 1st Baron de Saumarez.

Equally, if nationality is to be defined as the country of which the person is a citizen, national or permanent resident, why in your opinion does Rotelmayer think he can remove "Aretine" from the article on Petrarch, when that gentleman was born in and lived all his life in the nation of Arezzo, which did not fall to the Florentines until ten years after his death? Would you agree with Rotelmayer that Marco Polo was not Venetian?

Rotelmayer describes many the edits of those who revert him as "vandalism"; it looks to me as if he is himself, at the very least, being intentionally disruptive. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I have been told that the UK is a special case, and that technically speaking one can be a national of Scotland, Wales, etc. I don't know enough about it, and don't care to, so I just trust others on the matter. On Petrarch, surprisingly, I just told Rotelmayer that he's not Italian for exactly the reasons you said. I said I wasn't going to get involved, but maybe I'll take a close look. For the numerous number of hyphenated-Americans...quite often that's a problem that needs to be fixed, rather than a good example. But 1) there are legitimate times for ethnicity, as obviously Martin Luther King Jr. should, for example, be called "African-American", and 2) a lot of people are willing to spend a lot of time fighting to preserve ethnicity, and if you do start going down that road, it's going to involve a looooot of arguing (and edit warring by IPs, and sock puppetry, and noticeboards, etc.); this is especially true since there certainly is a fair amount of editorial discretion involved in the matter. It depends on how willing you are to deal with the long term headaches. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:21, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Addendum: when Walter asked me on my talk page about Petrarch, I had assumed that the "Italian" was something that had been in the article for a long time, and thus I wasn't interested in "fighting" with a group of established editors/scholars on the matter. But when I checked, I saw that WJR had just made the change to Italian in the last few days; as such, I did decide to come back and correctly revert him. I'm willing to believe that WJR was simply not understanding how MOS:BIO worked, and so hopefully this won't be an ongoing matter. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:28, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Thank you for your balanced reply. I've no strong feeling one way or the other here, I'm happy to follow the guidelines that the community has established. But I see a major problem with those guidelines, which appear to me to be (a) gravely unclear and (b) systematically ignored. Whoever told you that the UK is a special case was being somewhat economical with the truth. I happen to come from one those countries. My passport is issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and my nationality is clearly marked on it as "British citizen". I renewed it recently; there is no space on the passport form where one might insert a preference for being regarded as a citizen of one of the countries of the Union. The citizens of the UK are unambiguously British nationals. Anyway, I don't want to beat your ear, but I would like to know what others think. In your opinion, would this discussion best be continued at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies, or at, say, Talk:Petrarch? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:00, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

You cannot compare the Italian and British cases. The United Kingdom is composed by four countries (so-called Four Constituent Nations): England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Whilst Italy is a country with 20 regions as administrative divisions (Lombardy, Sicily, Veneto, Lazio, Tuscany, Campania …). This makes a huge difference.

It seems you read only what you want to read. First of all, Petrarch is considered one the fathers of the Italian culture and one of the three most prominent figures of the Italian language (along with Dante Alighieri and Boccaccio): the term “Italian” is relevant to the subject's notability. Second of all, Arezzo was a city-state, a “Commune”, and not a country and in similar way the term “nationality” didn’t exist at the time. It was used only since the birth of the so-called “Nation-states” such as France, Italy, Germany …

Vandalism issue. I’ll try to explain you again the reason why I considered “vandalism” the edits of August 27th https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/184.147.35.186 Vandalism. As you can see the IP user did them in less than one hour, without consensus and obviously with a great mistake: the IP user didn’t respect the WP:OPENPARAGRAPH that says: “In most modern-day cases this (location, nationality, or ethnicity) will mean the country of which the person is a citizen, national or permanent resident, or if notable mainly for past events, the country where the person was a citizen, national or permanent resident when the person became notable”. For instance: one of the edits was about Luigi Pirandello a Nobel Prize for the Italian Literature, born and dead in Italy; Another edit was about Giovanni Verga, the father of the Italian Verismo, born and dead in Italy.

Finally, I disagree with these changes. In Petrarch's article I added also a reference that states he was Italian: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/454103/Petrarch. I'm surprised you removed the term Italian from Petrarch. It does not make sense for a poet that is considered the father of the Italian language.--Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 22:59, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Replying to your question JLN, I'd say the Petrarch issue is best continued at Talk:Petrarch, and the UK question...maybe MOS, though I bet that if you really wanted to set a standard, you'd need a wider venue. However, I suspect this has probably been discussed before, so you may want to search around the Wikispace archives. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:55, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Lilian Pocock

Thanks for comment. Note you have reversed my removal of the reference to a Lilian Pocock window in Welsh church. I took this action following advice from Martin Crampin, an expert on Welsh stained glass, who as an excellent website on the subject. He had visited the church named personally and advised that the window described was not in the church, nor in any churches in the vicinity. My source had been the catalogue of the exhibition covering women artists. Martin and I concluded that the catalogue must have been wrong. As the author of the listing I felt it wrong to leave information that was wrong and removed it. Hope you will revert your action which, clearly taken to protect the article, was much appreciatedWeglinde (talk) 10:11, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

That makes sense, even if the personal communications of experts are not admissible as sources here, as of course they would be in the real world. I've reverted my edit until and unless other sources appear. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

That is super. I am most obliged.Weglinde (talk) 18:22, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Breed lists

Hey, you said you felt the Italian breed infobox was experimental and were looking for feedback. Just wanted to drop by and say that though at first glance it seems somewhat overly specific, but it's really very encyclopedic. Some folks might give you guff for it, but keep in mind that other Wikipedias tend to create country-specific breed lists as well (example). And there are also articles like Shetland animal breeds that have become quite well-developed.

The other feedback I'd give is that, especially for old breeds, national origins are often very much not clear-cut. For instance, the Polish chicken is almost certainly not Polish, the Russian Orloff might have actually come from Iran, and so on. In light of that, we should try to make sure the lists and classifications (where potentially vague or disputed) are verified by more than just the DAD-IS, though that's a pretty neutral source on the matter.

Anyway, if you ever need any help, feel free to ping me or drop a note at the WikiProject Agriculture talk page. There's also a slightly inactive livestock subproject there. Keep up the good work, Steven Walling • talk 02:41, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Steven! The reason I described the Italian sheep template as experimental was the very large number of red links, which some might have seen (quite correctly) as being contrary to usual practice; I wanted people to feel free to kick it into touch if they didn't like it. I'm not a great sheep-expert, but will try to turn some of those links blue in the next few days. Point very well taken about the lack of certainty about national origins - you'll perhaps have noticed that I have pasted small-print disclaimers all over both the lists and the templates. Funny you should mention the Polish chicken - I started Padovana chicken a while ago.

On a completely different topic: I believe you were among those responsible for negotiating the excellent JSTOR access for Wikipedians? Do you think it might be possible to arrange something similar with the DNB for editors outside Britain? They obviously aren't particularly jealous of their content if it is available in every library in the country, but they still lock out those of us that are not. I sometimes manage to get in through a back door, but it's frustrating when I can't. Just a thought ... Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:31, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Of note, see Ragusano, which I just created as a dab. Feel free to clean it up as you see fit, but so far there's a wine, a cheese and a donkey breed, so... a dab. Speaking of a back door to JSTOR, if you are desperate for an article, drop me an email, I can probably shoot you a pdf. Montanabw^(talk) 22:04, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, that's very helpful. I'd probably have got around to it in about 2022 unless I forgot. There may also be some from the other, more important, Ragusa (see Dubrovnik). That grape variety should probably be a redirect to Greco (grape), by the way. I'm OK for JSTOR for now, thanks - my SOAS alumnus access was supposed to expire in July, but doesn't yet seem to have done so. I have a trick for getting into the DNB, it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't; but in any case a request at WP:RX for one of those seems to have a turn-around time of about 8 minutes. But thanks for the offer. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:35, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

No prob, I think I'll leave the grape for those who care more than I do. Looks like multiple names and dabs there. Ditto for the link to Ragusa, that's their problem (smile). The dab cleaners are a pretty active bunch, they'll probably fix it up even nicer by at least 2018! Montanabw^(talk) 19:52, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Art spam

FYI, the thread you linked to in your removals, such as here, has been archived, so that section link doesn't work any more. You'll need to link directly to the archived section if that comes up again. Cheers, postdlf (talk) 00:45, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

...though now that I take a closer look, we have a bigger problem: you're removing citations. Is it your claim that these are not reliable sources? If they are, then spam isn't an issue if they are actually providing sourcing for content in the articles rather than just sitting in an external links section. postdlf (talk) 00:48, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that references have been removed from the Julian Opie article (and many others) after a user changed artinfo.com to blouinartinfo.com. Don't know why that web site decided to change its name (publisher vanity? have they learned nothing from webcrawler.com?) but Artinfo was and is a reputable online resource for who is exhibiting art where. As these links have now been ripped out entirely (and NOT replaced by citation needed), it now leaves many articles on internationally known artists with statements along the lines of "Bright Youngthing has exhibited at the Tate Modern (London), the Los Angles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Guggenheim Bilbao" without any citation. Please review. If ArtInfo is spam, it may be the most thorough and convincing arts spam on the Internet. There are, for example, 530 articles on Canadian artist and exhibitions over the last 5 years or so and I've done a random sampling: they all appear to be genuine articles -- I've been to some of the exhibits. There are other online resources but most are behind paywalls. Ross Fraser (talk) 00:51, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Note that I've already commented on this same issue above; I say just revert the removals, which seem to be cutting the nose off to spite the face. If these are reliable sources being used as citations within an article, then it is absurd and wrong to just remove them as "spam". If you are really bothered by the over reliance on these sources, then find better ones and replace them. postdlf (talk) 00:55, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

To try to reply to both of you at once: first, of course these are reasonable objections. Can I ask if either of you has actually read the discussion (or rather, absence of discussion) which is now here, and also the section that follows it? One employee of that company added (if I remember right) about 900 links to its website, in many cases introducing trivial bits of information to justify the additions. Another WP:SPA has been going round changing them. I think we have some sort of policy on that sort of behaviour.

I've been as careful as I can in removing them, though I've probably made some mistakes along the way. I've added {{cn}} tags in some places, removed bits of trivia added by JPLei or one of the IPs in some cases (article blamer has been useful there), replaced them with other and better references in some cases, and in many cases judged that if the information was remotely important it would be covered in other sources. If there are specific cases where the links need to be restored or replaced, please let me know. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:11, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

You left a big fucking mess in a lot of articles, but I'm almost done reverting. The discussion you linked to was inconclusive, to put it generously, and does not in any way represent a consensus that anything hosted at that site should not be permitted, or any understanding or conclusion that it is not a reliable source. I've left a few of your removals where the links did seem superfluous to the articles, but your wholescale removal was really indiscriminate and left a lot of previously sourced content unsourced. If there is a problem with this site, this is not the way to handle it. postdlf (talk) 01:16, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, and for your charming manners also. The advice I received at the spam noticeboard was that if I wanted this done I had to do it myself. Antonyj0403 has an an obvious WP:COI here and the 300 or however many edits he has made are clearly against that policy as well as that concerning spam. In my opinion, the person making a mess is you. In any case, I'm going to get some sleep now. You might like to go over your recent reversions and undo those that have reversed other changes I've made to many of those articles in accordance with our policies and practices here, such as tagging articles with COI problems, reducing linkfarms and the like. Or perhaps you'd like to make a start on undoing the 900 or so spam edits made by JPLei? I'd certainly appreciate some help here, and I certainly haven't had any so far. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 01:37, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

We don't do one-person crusades here, so drop the idea that you are somehow compelled or entitled to wage war on this art.info site. And given that JPLei hasn't even been active since 2009, there's hardly any urgency there. Get a discussion going at Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts about the usefulness of the citations in the articles and whether to replace them. And you've already had one admin tell you you were overreacting about Antonyj0403. If you insist on pushing that, then start a discussion with other editors about that as well to gain a consensus view instead of, again, taking it upon yourself to judge the account a spammer and their edits worthless. postdlf (talk) 02:41, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I've reverted the Julian Opie article edits because the links point to a well-written article by Robert Ayers, an art reviewer also writing for Huffington Post and elsewhere. I can find no fault with artinfo.com (now blouinartinfo.com) as a credible source for these citations. And the original edit that changed artinfo.com to blouinartinfo.com is (at least for this one article) merely preservation of links and prevention of link rot. I won't comment on the broader issues of how best to update links when an online publication changes its web url. Ross Fraser (talk) 07:54, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough, thanks for letting me know. If there are other articles where you think the same applies, please mention them. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:29, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Convert template

JLAN, on Budyonny horse, can you also add an inches conversion to the hands and metric ones you just did there today? Seems like you can do that, cannot recall which articles you had it in... but anyway, just a request for the three-measurement conversion. Thanks Montanabw^(talk) 05:58, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

As far as I know the only way to add inches at the moment is to do it manually; I don't recall doing it at all in the past, since I don't see any reason for it, as you know. Neither {{convert}} nor {{convert/show2 }} appears to yield the right result at the moment. I've asked about it here, but I imagine they may be more concerned about the move to lua right now. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:38, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, if you recall the epic edit discussion over this in 2011 or whenever it was, there was a consensus to use the three way conversion. If you really want to start that all up again, I guess I can't stop you. The hands template does the best job of this, ( and where hands falls between a centimeter measurement, this form works: {{hands|15.1 + 1/2}} = 15.1 ¹⁄₂ hands (61.5 inches, 156 cm) ) but you have issues with putting hands first, so though I don't view a conversion template as OR, and if the nation of origin uses cm, I have no problem saying that in the article for those used to seeing hands, but whatever. Montanabw^(talk) 00:08, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I am not going to make a case against your use of convert templates that put cm first, as your "what does the official book say" argument is a legitimate argument, even if I view it differently from you. I can see some situations where it is even potentially useful. However, please return the courtesy and do not reopen the debate over the use of hands that we had in 2011 or attack the hands template, which took a lot of time and work to develop (and not by me). The template is a simple and elegant one that is used across hundreds of articles. Further, it's mostly all the same people at WPEQ, and it's just going to pick at the scab, it can go from zero to nasty quite fast and we all have other work to do around here. Montanabw^(talk) 22:24, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

October 2013

• Don't remove content from the encyclopedia as you did at Zahran, it may be considered vandalism. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:08, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

About College of Medicine & Sagore Dutta Hospital

I examined the metadata of that PDF(which was listed as a source) and found that it was created on Feb 21,2012—that means that it was a copyvio.So what do I do(about sources)?Guru-45 (talk) 18:46, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

That was clever of you. Obviously, if it had turned out that the pdf was copied from our page, then it would not have made any sense to cite it as a source. But since it wasn't, I can't see any reason why it and the website of the college, which was also copied from, cannot now be used as sources for expanding the article, with perhaps some extra care to make very sure there is nothing that looks remotely like copying or close paraphrasing of the original. Good luck! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:49, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I have rewritten the article to remove the offending portions.Since the college is new,and does not feature much in the news,it is likely that the article will be short for quite a long time.06:12, 5 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guru-45 (talk • contribs)

Studley, Inc.

Hi, you recently added a copyright issue template to the topic Mitchell S. Steir. I am contacting you in hopes that you may remove this template and allow me to edit the copy so that it falls within Wikipedia's guidelines. I know it's no excuse, but had I been more experienced with Wikipedia and knew it's nuances in the first place these issues simply would not exist. It is my goal for Studley Inc. and it's notable entities to have a netural, well-written and well cited articles that in turn advance Wikipedia's goal of being a trusted source of information. Please cut me some slack. RyLaughlin (talk) 20:00, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that is precisely the fundamental problem here. May I suggest that if you were definitively to abandon that goal and let other, uninvolved, editors contribute as and when they wish to those three articles it would be a lot easier for everyone, including you, and almost certainly better for the articles too in the long run. I've now cleaned up Steir, and will try to get around to Colacino soon, unless someone else does it first. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:32, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for cleaning up those articles, I truly appreciate it. I'd like to know if you believe any of the Template:COI, Template:Advert or Template:Notability are now eligible to be removed on either page now after your edits. Also, would it be acceptable to add secondary references to an "Additional Links" section at the bottom of page for future editors to hopefully reference? I'm afraid that on the talk page they won't be easily visible. Thanks again. RyLaughlin (talk) 17:13, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

In response to your accusation of creating a link farm, look one line above and you can clearly see, if you haven't already, that I asked you if I could add secondary references to the page to help assist other editors. Link farming requires intent to manipulate a platform, so either you did not see my original message or your definition of link farming is inaccurate. Please remove the COI template from Michael D. Colacino and I'll be happy to put this to rest and continue to work on other non-related articles. RyLaughlin (talk) 19:06, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

WikiAfrica

I closed the discussion as delete, but it looks like there are some subpages that you may want to send to TfD as well. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 19:45, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that, and for the heads-up. Those subpages seem to be a slightly different case in that they do not purport to represent a WikiProject that doesn't exist. But they seem to have other fundamental problems, so I've nominated them also. Thanks again, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:24, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Templates for deletion

Rather than continue at the TfD I thought I'd come here. If you haven't seen my talk page already then User_talk:Thincat#WikiAfrica may be of interest. There's a lot been going on behind the scenes and I'm suspicious about virtually all reference to WikiAfrica having been removed (including stuff in no way promotional). I do not think you have been involved in this at all and that you have just got here by chance, like I have. Although I am not an academic I have worked alongside academics all my working life so I know "consultant" can cover a multitude of sins. On the one hand it can mean working very hard for no pay or kudos and sometimes even having to pay for travel, etc. out of your own pocket. Just for the love of the subject. But it can also be a lucrative gravy train. I think unless we know more we should accept textual and image contributions assuming good faith and tone down promotionalism in the material and its attribution (but not remove the attribution). Best wishes (which I have also offered to Iopensa!). Thincat (talk) 00:33, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning that discussion; if I reply to the comments you've made here, it'll be there. Meanwhile, may I make a request: if you should happen to mention my name again, I'd be grateful if you'd either wikilink it (User:Justlettersandnumbers) or use one of the user templates such as {{U}}, so that I get a notification (or, of course, just let me know as you have done this time). Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:57, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I will and I'm sorry I didn't. I don't know exactly how the notifications system works but I thought Iopensa's link to your username would have notified you. Thincat (talk) 22:58, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Voice actor filmographies

Okay, before you go nuts on wiping every single filmography in existence, may I recommend that you comment out the lists so that people have an opportunity to fill in the references? -AngusWOOF (talk) 00:35, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually, AngusWOOF, it would probably be a good idea to just leave filmography sections as is, and source roles that can be sourced (it's pretty difficult to find sources confirming a role without using a work's end credits, especially for English dubs where reliable coverage is almost non-existent) but without blanking the whole section. The problem would be, blanking or commenting-out a section is not a good practice because it would remove most of the information on the page. While sources are admittedly very difficult to find (anime dubbing is still a niche industry in the United States), this doesn't mean that such sections should be wiped off. If needed, maybe just citing an official website or the work itself would be enough. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 01:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

No prob. Suggest tagging with refimprove and unreferenced - any seriously wrong entries would be nuked anyway. -AngusWOOF (talk) 03:45, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

So overdue

		The Copyright Cleanup Barnstar
		Thank you for always being conscious of and responsible with copyright issues. Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:47, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

I can't believe that I haven't spammed you with one of these before. I don't remember at what point you transitioned into being one of the people on Wikipedia that I just think of as awesome in this area, but it's been such a long time ago that I would have assumed I had already popped in a picture to express my appreciation. I consider this long overdue. :) Thank you so much for keeping an eye out for this and facilitating the cleanup of so many issues. You help keep our articles "Quality". :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:47, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, I'm honoured indeed! In fact doubly so, by the star itself (however little deserved), but much more by who it came from. Thank you, Moonriddengirl! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:29, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

On that note, you might want to peek at the cn tags here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Buttero&diff=584989445&oldid=567467574 If they can't be sourced and that section is tossed, it won't hurt my feelings. Montanabw^(talk) 20:03, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Equally, it won't hurt mine if you make that call. However, it's one of the least debatable statements in that whole mess, and the tags haven't been there for so very long, so my inclination is to let it be for a while longer. Surely somebody, somewhere, on one side of the sea or the other, must have written an authoritative history of the mass emigration from southern Italy to the USA? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:03, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Someone has ... it's just likely to be in a genealogy library somewhere. Since most of my ancestry was from Northern Europe, unfortunately I don't have anything dealing with Italian immigration. Might ask the genealogy project? Ealdgyth - Talk 14:37, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Well that's a thought; I was thinking more of a social history. There's a curious and remarkably well-documented "museum of emigration" at Coreglia Antelminelli; but the principal industry of that small town is the production of religious figurines and funerary monuments (yes, they did a rip-roaring trade with Chicago), and that is the focus of the museum. It's too far north to be connected in any way with the buttero/cavalcante culture. I had another quick search on Google without any joy. I'll try to remember to look for something next time I go to a real, physical, library (which isn't often). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 03:08, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I'll be honest that I don't have enough interest to look into the matter, but I know that the notion that Italian culture is the source of all that is right and good in America is kind of common, so view the data with some dubiousness, given the strength of the pre-existing Spanish influence there. But if it can be sourced, it would be interesting. Montanabw^(talk) 05:17, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Should you be interested

I have long been seeking help reviewing the Spanish sources for Yeguada Militar de Jerez de la Frontera. Someone recently tried to add that the stud is now "closed", and complained to me when I reverted their edit (so what else is new), but the Google translation of the very short Spanish wiki article says "Stud went in 2013 to be an autonomous body under the Ministry of Interior", and that page and some other sites indicate that they may have had a big auction and sold off a lot of the horses - but not all. So I can't tell if they just downsized things a bunch when placing the program under civilian control, or if they closed all the farms, closed just the Jerez facility, or what.

I'd like the en.wiki article to be accurate, but with a complete absence of English articles on the topic, I'm stymied. So any help is welcome.

I did the best I could when I created this article, using google translate from the Spanish wiki page, other research sources in Spanish, and some English-language sources (English source example, one of the better ones, more often I found stuff like this), but my attempts to find a Spanish-speaking reviewer to help me at the time met with a notable lack of interest, and I just let the article sit once the basics were done. I am certain that the article contains inaccuracies, but I did what I could. The biggest issue is that I am sure there are facilities other than at Jerez, but all the English language sources I know of either just say "Yeguada Militar" broadly and provide no details that help, or they specifically discuss the Jerez farm(s) and nothing else.

At any rate, this source MIGHT be discussing the shutdown issue somewhat, but I can't tell for sure: [1], (the google translation] is a useless disaster); and if it isn't on point, perhaps it could lead you to something more definitive?

To improve the overall article, I do not speak Spanish, but I did find a documentary that looks promising and could be used to improve the overall article: here. If you have the interest in adding sources to the article from the video, see what I did with video sources for Sheila Varian and William Robinson Brown. It's not too hard to do the pinpoint citations, just put in the minute and second on the film where the relevant material begins. Here is another source that appears to discuss the other Yeguada Militar installations across Spain: and this one appears to discuss the facility that handled breeding of farm/draft horses: [http://tododeporte.elcomercio.es/asturias/2013-02-01/yeguada-militar-ibio-1318.html

If this is of no interest to you, no worries, but I'd be glad to know if you are aware of another fluent Spanish speaker who is on en.wiki and on the side of sourcing one's additions who might want to help. Montanabw^(talk) 04:22, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, for some reason I saw that edit and revert, and so took a quick look at the Spanish article, which as you say says that the stud will cease to be autonomous, citing this article. Since the change doesn't happen until 1 January it didn't seem to me too urgent to add it to the article here. It doesn't make much sense to me, because as I understood it the Cría Caballar was part of the military, so hardly independent in the first place; but maybe I missed something. Anyway, if the Cría Caballar is gone, that should at least solve the disagreement over who should hold the studbook for the PRE! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:12, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh gawd, don't even get me started on that drama! LOL! As for Yeguada Militar, all I seek is accuracy and proper formatting, be my guest over there. My primary interest in it is for its history, especially as it relates to the development of the Spanish-bred Arabian (which is a very nice subset of bloodlines in terms of athleticism and trainability) and in the preservation of the Andalusian/PRE. European state studs fascinate me; we have nothing like this in the USA, even our old remount system was mostly private, even in the brief period when there were remount depots. Montanabw^(talk) 22:49, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Unspaced mixed numbers

I have commented and added subthread "Opinions of unspaced mixed numbers" to gather user comments under the topic:

• WT:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Spacing of mixed numbers

Thank you for posting that topic, during the busy year-end period, to allow more time to gather opinions and perhaps hide the internal space before the next 18-day reformatting of Template:Convert, planned for mid-January. Immediate discussion, in the next 4 weeks, could provide a system-wide solution by early February 2014, for a problem which should never have been slipped into system-wide operation without broader discussion in advance. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:38, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! And thank you for adding the RfC tag also - I was planning to do the same if anything resembling a discussion developed. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:17, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Good to know you will watch the discussion, as WP has become a logisitical bureaucracy, now even with Lua {convert} running 18-day reformat to redisplay and relink the fractions among all 554,000 related pages. Previously, the markup-based {convert}, with 3,000 sub-optimized tiny subtemplates, would have directly reformatted the 2,400 fractional conversion articles within a day, but now it will take until late February (2 months from now) to decide the RfC and reformat fractional conversions! I get tired just thinking about it. Welcome to 21st-century typesetting. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:38, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

		The WikiProject Film Award
		I, Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) , hereby award Justlettersandnumbers the WikiProject Film Award for his/her valued contributions to WikiProject Film. Awarded 12:41, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

• Yay! You added enough to where I moved the article to Mario Landi! If you find anything else, that's where it is now. Again, thank you so much!!! Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 12:41, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm pleased. I'm sorry that the Mereghetti reviews were not more complimentary, but what makes his book so good is that he always says exactly what he thinks. Let me know if you ever need to know what it says about any other Italian film, I have at least two editions. And thanks for quite undeserved star! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:25, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

cheers

apologies for the unnecessary snarkiness on my part. i will do better in the future! --Lquilter (talk) 14:32, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

No apology needed, it's all fine with me (but thanks anyway), kind of a storm in a teacup. I went ahead and made a CCI request after discovering what seem to me other more serious copyvios by the same user(s). Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:26, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Your turn

I think it's your turn :) Flat Out let's discuss it 01:02, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

And perhaps yours again now? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:31, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

CCI update

That was over fast. MER-C 09:25, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Indeed! Thank you for opening it, and thanks to those who helped close it. Congrats on your new status also (which I had always thought you already had). Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:20, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

MER-C 05:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Don't bother others, cancel facts if you want

Please don't bother me about your paranoic issues on copyright. I never more will bring another contribution to wikipedia. I don't think a single phrase is violation of copyright if sources are cited. Otherwise systems as google news couldn't work. In any case if you are paranoiac don't bother me and do what you want deleting what you desire. Now do you the work. And if you are not willing to reframe something interesting saving the facts cancel them and put them away. Nothing will bother about and wikipedia will be poorer — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.203.130.116 (talk) 15:46, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Si, hai creato davvero un sacco di lavoro. Ti consiglio di leggere attentamente questa pagina - o, se preferisci leggere in inglese, WP:COPYOTHERS. Buona giornata, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:30, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Remember, Justlettersandnumbers, just because you're paranoid - it doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Flat Out let's discuss it 10:16, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Khaled's Moroccan citizenship

Hello,

Do you really think that the problem with user:MoorNextDoor is related to some poor English skills? Don't you think that it is (more simply) only a POV-pushing/WP:TRUTH case? i.e. a new user trying to impose what he believes on Wiki? Even by interpreting French sentences the way he likes? [2][3][4][5][6]

Regards,Br/>--Omar-toons (talk) 09:10, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I am not trying to impose anything and I really don't understand what your problem is with facts that are backed by reliable sources. Since we're not going to ignore them, how about you tell us which French sentences you're referring ? Feel free to come up with a better interpretation if you can, that's what discussions are all about. [7][8]

MoorNextDoor (talk) 14:02, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

In reply to Omar-toons, no, I don't think that. I think we should assume good faith; that is why I wondered if there might be a minor language problem there. Anyway, I don't really see any point in continuing this here as well as on the talk page of the article. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:15, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Copyright clerkdom

Thank you for your willingness to try out something new. :) I think you're temperamentally suited for the work (I know from our previous experiences that you are careful and thorough), and I'm very grateful for whatever time you want to give it. Seriously, every little bit helps.

Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Clerks talks more about the role. Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for clerks offers some advice for doing the work. You are as you always have been very welcome to come by my talk page if you have any questions. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, MRG! I will take it very slowly for now. Even if you don't see anything happening, that may not necessarily mean that I'm not watching what others do! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:24, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

John Skeaping

hi - just saw the edit for removal of the Lund Humphries book which is fact a catalogue raisonne…. but I see your point about the publisher info. What about incorporation it into the previous heading (resources) - it is THE publication of his work, so a shame for its loss here…? Cant find any independent reviews, but it is produced in association with Henry Moore Institute which has charitable aims. Regards Cazimir (talk) 10:53, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the note! I removed it not because there was any specific objection to the book, but because someone apparently connected to the publisher had spammed similar links across 30 or 40 articles (that's a reputable publisher, you'd think they'd know better). Do please feel completely free to re-add it - perhaps without the weblink to the publisher's blurb page? Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:06, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for Edit: Studley, Inc.

Hi JustLettersandNumbers,

I am contacting you to request an edit for the article Studley, Inc. I've requested edits multiple times with no success and the prolonged lack of content in the article is damaging the brand's image while our competitor CBRE Group for example continues to have a full length article despite being flagged for potentially having a COI author over a year ago.

I've written a few paragraphs in Talk:Studley, Inc. #Request edit on 10 December 2014 that I hope are helpful, but I would be grateful for any content you can add to the article. Please let me know if you or anyone you know anybody can assist, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks so much for your time and patience. RyLaughlin (talk) 18:36, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Ryan, thanks for for your courteous note. I'm sorry that your edit requests have not had a response; nor are you alone in that, I'm afraid. I'll try to look at the page and comment there soon. The tone and content at CBRE Group are in my opinion quite inappropriate to this project; I've listed it at the conflict of interest noticeboard in the hope that someone will look at it. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:34, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your fairness in editing our competitor and for your willingness to comment on the Studley page. Both are much appreciated. RyLaughlin (talk) 21:26, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Navboxes

I'd strongly recommend you read WP:NAVBOX, WP:NAVBOXES and WP:REDNOT before reverting my navbox tidyup any further. If you have any questions, or don't understand how some of it applies, please just ask. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:17, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Rob, I'd strongly recommend that YOU re-read WP:BRD, your "tidying" is not helpful and is removing tools that have been stable for quite some time. You are not helping. Montanabw^(talk) 18:37, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

CCI update

Thanks for helping out with this one, seems like they're finally getting cleared a lot quicker. Wizardman 04:22, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, I only did some of the easy ones, and left all the tough ones for you. Anyway, one down. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:22, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

MER-C 11:47, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

MER-C 11:53, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh, yes! Another one bites the dust! Thanks for letting me know. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:16, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For your good work on First Presbyterian Day School when all my efforts failed. Theroadislong (talk) 23:17, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! But I thought you were doing just fine, and in particular had picked up and eliminated the old copyvio. I should be giving you this star! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:21, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your patient collaboration on the perfect fifth article. For your amusement, the following: Yesterday evening I got to hear a trio consisting of violin, cello, and guitar, in a small-town library. They were mostly playing traditional Scottish fiddle tunes and similar stuff. To adorn a waltz-time island lullaby, the cellist had a pretty good seagull sound, catching various harmonics on her D string while pulling the left thumb up towards the nut. She made it sound like a call and response among several birds. :) __ Just plain Bill (talk) 16:52, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Oh, nice, Just plain Bill! I'll try and remember to look at the fifth talk page again soon; I was surprised at how difficult it is to phrase that clearly. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:46, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

It happens

You know. Stuff. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:32, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Just saying thanks

I just wanted to drop by and thank you for the work you've been doing at WP:CP. It is, unfortunately, frequently a thankless job, but it's been noticed and appreciated. There are very few people who are willing to put any time into that at all, and it's such crucial work, and I am so grateful for the time you've been able to give it. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:15, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Moonriddengirl! I'm afraid I've been of very little use recently, for various real-life reasons visiting Wikipedia only briefly and infrequently. However, I've been quite pleasantly surprised at the number of "thank you"s a copyright clean-up can generate. As for "stuff", yes it does happen; but (much) more often to some than to others! Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:46, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Antonio_Pio_Saracino

Talk:Antonio_Pio_Saracino - I guess I should be happy someone noticed the copyright tag, but it would be even better if you perhaps looked at the page's content. Thanks. Zanglazor (talk) 12:08, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Zanglazor, I did indeed look at the page content. It was unambiguously promotional, copied from the website of the subject, and almost certainly contributed by someone closely connected to that subject. You might perhaps like to read these guidelines. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:55, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Speedy deletion declined: GT Advanced Technologies

Hello Justlettersandnumbers, and thanks for patrolling new pages! I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of GT Advanced Technologies, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: I've compared it with the link given, and I can't find any chunks of text which have been copied directly so it doesn't look like a copyvio to me. Happy to reasses if you disagree. You may wish to review the Criteria for Speedy Deletion before tagging further pages. Thank you. Olaf Davis (talk) 17:04, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, Olaf Davis, I'm actually quite familiar with the speedy criteria, and G12 in particular. This isn't a new page, it's already been deleted twice. Please take a look at this and [9]. I agree that the second is not a word-for-word copy, but it nevertheless shows up a lot of copied stuff and close paraphrasing. Or perhaps either you or Jimfbleak would be kind enough to compare the recreated article with the one he deleted on 19 February? Otherwise I can go ahead and list it at WP:CP. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:31, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

The version I deleted on 13 Feb is very similar, although not quite identical, to that SD-declined by Olaf Davis. Three admins have looked at this now, and reached two different conclusions, two deleting and one declining. Much as I dislike referring anything to WP:CP, unless Olaf is swayed by your Dup Detector links, I don't think there is any alternative. Its content is predictably selective (products and awards, not employee numbers, profits or turnover) but not actually spammy (and I've just had my wrist slapped for deleting on the basis of selective content) Jimfbleak - talk to me? 17:53, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Jimfbleak. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have speedied it this time around if it hadn't seemed so similar to my recollection of the previous version. I don't there's any doubt it was created by copying the hitchhikersgui.de page; I've no idea whether that page can be regarded as copyright or not (deleted copyvio content copied from us, no free licence, a right muddle). We'll see what Olaf decides. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:09, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi. First off, sorry if the template message I left seemed patronising or, on the new pages point, inaccurate. I use a tool for processing CSDs which I installed about a billion years ago and didn't even remember what the messages it left looked like.

On the duplication reports (which I couldn't access earlier due to a down server, or I would've reviewed): in the second of the two links you give, the duplicates are all pretty short phrases which don't, to me, seem like copyvios - I'm not really sure how one would paraphrase "directional solidification system dss multicrystalline and monocast casting furnaces". Regarding the first link you posted, I confess I'm totally confused. The duplication detector claims to have found numerous matches of whole paragraphs, but none of them appear as far as I can see to exist in the cached version of the mirror which the tool claims it's making the comparison to. Can either of you explain what's going on? Am I missing something? Also, since the site in question appears to be a Wikipedia mirror anyway, even if they were identical it surely wouldn't make our article a copyvio of theirs. Olaf Davis (talk) 18:59, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Olaf, and np! It would be so good if the Duplication detector worked all the time. Frankly, I'm confused too; the hitchhikers page is indeed a mirror; it's mirroring content which we have previously determined to be a copyvio and have thus deleted; it doesn't carry a copyleft notice that I can see. I've really no idea what the copyright status of that page is, but I'm in no doubt that the current version of our article was copied from it. I've now listed the article at WP:CP and hope that a better brain than mine will come to bear on it there. There is to my mind a quite unacceptable level of copying/ close-paraphrasing from the investorwand page which in any case needs to be sorted out. As for how to paraphrase the phrase you quote, an editor who was here to improve Wikipedia rather than clock up points for a class assignment would probably know what those things are (as I do not), and have no trouble describing them in other words. Regards, and thanks to you both, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:11, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, good call on sending it to CP I think - I'm also not entirely sure how to deal with it really. I guess I've made some extra work for you and some lucky other person by declining the CSD. Olaf Davis (talk) 00:37, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, speedy would have been quicker, yes. But not I believe quite 100% justified in this case. So I think all-in-all you made the right call. Thanks! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:58, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I went in and fixed it by writing a stub summarizing the content. A lot of that content was promotional anyway. CorporateM (Talk) 01:49, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Belated thanks for that, CorporateM! I've now nominated it for deletion; like so many of the articles created by this school project, it is non-notable by our standards. I hope you didn't spend much time on it! Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 15:11, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Burning Paradise

Yikes! Just give me a warning first! I thought I wrote it different enough from the source. :S Andrzejbanas (talk) 16:47, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, the article is listed at Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations/2014-03-05; I'm assuming that MadmanBot left a template on it to say that? Unless of course it wasn't you that created the previous version of it (which of course I don't have any way of knowing), in which case I apologise, but would anyway ask you to take a touch more care to write in your own words. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:25, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

NBCC

Hi, could you please take a moment to read the talk page of Norwegian-British Chamber of Commerce, with its OTRS notice, and then consider adding back in the correctly sourced material that I had added to the article? I do not see how blanking basic facts sourced to old copies of The Times and other sources benefits Wikipedia.

The OTRS release means that you have blanked a valid article with no copyright justification. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 16:14, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I've self-reverted. The article has been a blatant copyvio since November 2006. I suppose the OTRS release makes that sort of OK; I wonder what Moonriddengirl would think about that? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:33, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

By all means ask MRG, we have worked together in the past, she may have a view on the OTRS ticket and I am happy to invite feedback. This is the second time an editor has missed the talk page OTRS ticket. If there is a better way of flagging to editors that they ought to check the talk page I would be open to suggestions. --Fæ (talk) 16:37, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

It's okay, since they created it themselves. Otherwise, we'd need to use an attribution template on the face of the article. Those are sometimes helpful, anyway. With a history that recently complex, overlooking an OTRS note is understandable, and the face tag can help avoid confusion. That said, I generally check the talk page anyway in case there's an OTRS tag or a link to a license on the site itself. :) Fæ, the issue here is that the article was listed at WP:SCV, which is why it was being investigated. Unfortunately, that's easily overlooked in the history as well, or you could have marked that it was handled there. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:42, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to look into it. --Fæ (talk) 16:45, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)OK, thanks, MRG! Does the old history need to be hidden? What I was going to say to Fae: Well, I was just wondering exactly the same myself. Something like {{CC-notice}} for OTRS releases might help to avoid other misunderstandings, but I don't know of any such thing. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:50, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I think it's probably okay - I worry about that kind of thing more when the newer content looks inferior to the older. In this case, the old content was, er, not so good. :) All content added by Anno1906 is included in the release, as I read it. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:56, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Revision deletion requests

Thanks for your revdel requests.As soon as I see your username in the history of a page I'm tempted to not even check for the copyvios and just delete whatever you have requested because your reports are always accurate. I see you already have a Copyright Cleanup Barnstar on this page so I'll just leave a message instead of another. Your work on keeping WP copyvio free is much appreciated. James086^Talk 19:02, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! And thank you for dealing with so many of those revdeletion requests, you seem to be one of the few that do that. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:30, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Parabola Films

Hello, Justlettersandnumbers. Have I dealt with the copyright problems in this draft? —Anne Delong (talk) 22:21, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Anne! No, in a word, I think not. It's not the shortage of references that I saw as the problem, but the fact that the text was copied directly from the company's website. Since that goes right back to the first version of the draft, there's no clean version to revert back to; the best thing is probably to let it be deleted, and then wait until someone (you, perhaps?) is interested enough in the company to write a proper article. As far as I can see, the creator of the draft has anyway lost interest in it. Sorry if that isn't the answer you wanted, do please feel free to ask at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems if you have doubts. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:40, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Justlettersandnumbers, I had rewritten all of the text in the paragraph in my own words. I have never seen the company web site, so I doubt that I could have accidentally invented text that was just like it. —Anne Delong (talk) 10:57, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, of course not. I'm sorry if I made a mistake there (can't check now); my recollection is that it was unfortunately still too close. I'm sure that Jimfbleak would restore the content to you if wanted him to. You do great stuff at AfC. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:23, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Angelo Rules removed

Hello, You've removed some sections of the article Angelo Rules. I don't understand what's the issue about the information I put on this page. They are neutral informations such as the list of episodes or description of characters and it's not a promotional content at all. My source is indeed the official website of the series but as I sent recently an email to 'permissions-en@wikimedia.org' to allow the uses of this copyrighted content without rewriting it with other words, I would like to ask you to delete your removal. Thank you, Constance Lassort (talk) 09:55, 17 April 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Constance Lassort (talk • contribs) 09:31, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Why did you once again delete the sections I've just added on the article? I've put some references for each sections to prove the neutral point of view of these information. I really don't get your problem. I've done exactly the same for the French page, and I've just added external sources as well. As this series is a notable series, broadcasted all over the world, why can't I put information about it on Wikipedia? Moreover, I had some emails exchange with Wikimedia official permissions to freely use the content of the official website to fill the article. Thanks for your reply in talk to me? --Constance Lassort (talk) 09:59, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Plankton Invasion speed deletion

You've asked for the speed deletion of the article Plankton Invasion. I don't understand what's the issue about the information I put on this page. They are neutral informations such as the scenario, list of episodes or description of characters and it's not a promotional content at all. My source is indeed the official website of the series but as I sent recently an email to 'permissions-en@wikimedia.org' to allow the uses of this copyrighted content without rewriting it with other words, I would like to ask you to delete your removal. Thank you, Constance — Preceding unsigned comment added by Constance Lassort (talk • contribs) 09:35, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, Constance Lassort, you were advised of the copyright problem on 9 October last year, so "recently" may have been a little late to send that email. It is in any case very unlikely that the promotional materials of a film company would be suitable content for Wikipedia. As far as I recall, the Plankton Invasion page was entirely promotional in tone, and copied directly from your press release. I can't see it or restore it to you, but you can ask Jimfbleak, the admin who deleted it, to do so (he will see that I have written this). If, as it appears, you work for the company, you have what we call a conflict of interest with regard to this page and others such as Angelo Rules and TeamTO; please take the time to read that guideline carefully, particularly where it says: "you are very strongly discouraged from directly editing Wikipedia in areas where those external relationships could reasonably be said to undermine your ability to remain neutral", and the section on European fair trading law. You are of course always welcome to suggest improvements on the talk pages of those articles. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:18, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

As you guess, I'm working indeed for the company TeamTO which produce Angelo Rules and Plankton Invasion and as I'm working here since a few months, I wasn't aware of the copyright problem advise before. I still don't understand why you call this content a promotional one as it's only a synopsis of the series (and I'm not allowed to re-write it because it has been validated by its author himself and the producer) and the list of episodes (which I can't obviously change the titles) or such things. Why these information are allowed for the Article Space Goofs, or any others series or companies such as Xilam, and not mine? I don't want to convince you, I really don't understand your point of view. Maybe Jimfbleak will be able to reply to this conflict, by restoring at least some sections of these pages or answering to my concerns. Thank you again for your time Justlettersandnumbers --Constance Lassort (talk) 10:29, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

I've seen this discussion, and I'll reply in due course. I'll respond at User talk:Constance Lassort unless Justlettersandnumbers indicates a wish to keep the thread here Jimfbleak - talk to me? 11:14, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

For heroic activity in the area of copyright

	The copyright hero award
	Specifically inspired by your helping with the really old issue, but just general appreciation for the time you have been giving copyright cleanup. :) Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:56, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

You are the first to benefit from my finding this awesome image when trying to find a generic superhero to award you - it's obviously a copyright placeholder where non-free images don't exist, but how appropriate is this? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:57, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Moonriddengirl! Of course, I don't look quite like that in real life ... Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:40, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

LOL. Feel free to replace with your own picture if you choose. Just make sure you have a cape. :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:15, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

No, no cape! - see The Incredibles for my reasons... Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:21, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. In the alternative, I suppose we could settle for very visible branding - either a massive logo on your chest or some kind of helmet. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:25, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Your Recent Edit to Education Theory

Hi. You recently made this edit [10] to Education theory. You gave the following edit summary: "Reverted to revision 559194811 by Aeternus: Presumptively restore last apparently clean version before additions of possibly copyright-violating material (see talk); some subsequent edits may need to be redone". Whilst I fully agree with your stated aim of reducing copyright violations, the way you have attempted to do this here is not within our community customs and guidelines. A commonly-followed approach is "Revert vandalism upon sight but revert an edit made in good faith only after careful consideration. It is usually preferable to make an edit that retains at least some elements of a prior edit than to revert the prior edit. Furthermore, your bias should be toward keeping the entire edit."

I strongly feel that you have been deeply unwise to revert in the way you did: you have not merely reverted to an immediately preceding version of the article, but to the 40th preceding - a version of the article written ten months ago! You have cavalierly disregarded a large number of bona fide edits to the article since then, and have added insult to injury by remarking that "some subsequent edits may need to be redone". This is not even slightly helpful. Whilst I am aware of the current investigation into work by Stmullin it would have been far more helpful to re-write that editor's contributions, rather than simply throw away a large number of good faith edits. The situation is made worse by the fact that you have done all of this "presumptively": if you don't have good evidence of a clear copyright violation, to simply wipe out ten months of work by other people than the suspect editor is excessive. Finally, your remark that "some subsequent edits may need to be redone" is an inadequate performance of your duties: you should have worked out which ones these were, and redone them yourself, rather than leave a mess for other people to tidy up. My overall point is this: an extreme revert like this is not an acceptable way to deal with the problem you are trying to solve; you would have been better to re-write with care, rather than indulge in a slapdash revert to a much older version. Please "revert your reversion" and perform a re-write of the appropriate bits of the article. Thank you.

RomanSpa (talk) 06:07, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for this accolade. I particularly enjoyed the bit about the "inadequate perfomance of [my] duties". As far as I can see, you have made exactly one edit to Education theory, in which you changed the word "than" to "from". I have redone that edit for you, though you could perfectly well have done it yourself. If there are other significant edits that also need to be redone as a result of the rollback, please either go ahead and make the changes, or list them on the article talk page. Of the 40 edits you mention, 20 were by the editor in question; several are vandalism, reverts of the same, bot edits; what did I miss?

That said, I welcome review of my edits here. If I've been over-hasty or over-zealous in this case, or failed in some way to follow the cleanup instructions here, I hope that more experienced copyright cleanup editors will feel perfectly free to tell me so. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:34, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

You have missed my point, which is that it would be far better to delete the parts of the article that you felt were violating copyright, rather than reverting to a version of the article from ten months ago. Reverting to such an old article without cleaning up afterwards is not helpful, and it is not acceptable to blithely wave your hands and hope that someone else will redo lost work. You are certainly engaged in good and important work, but this doesn't exempt you from our general guidelines on reversion. RomanSpa (talk) 10:20, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

The essay you link to is not a guideline. It contains a notice at the top clarifying that it is not policy or guideline. It is Wikipedia policy that no editor has any duty to make any edits per WP:NOTREQUIRED. It is also Wikipedia policy to remove material that is strongly suspected of being a copyright violation per WP:DCV. ParacusForward (talk) 14:10, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you for tidying up this article. I am still getting used to how this works and the guide lines you sent will help. Is there a place I can send proposed edits for correction before posting them so as not to inadvertently violate these policies? GJS Greg Sheppard (talk) 01:10, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

@Greg Sheppard: - the best place is on the article talk space - i.e. its "flip side" - so it'd be Talk:Sheppard (band) (and Talk:Geronimo (song) for that matter). Generally anyone who's edited the article will see an alert come up on their watchlist and then can discuss and determine what/how to add. Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:56, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Greg Sheppard! As you saw, Casliber actually did almost all the work, and is much more deserving of this star. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Editor's Barnstar

You've done a boldly remarkable job at Los Angeles College of Music. You did a lot of reading and bold cutting. It was a puffed up piece of peacockery before! I saw the work in progress and I guess you started right when I discovered it by way of a vandalism report. I had done some stuff back then, but I was motivated to polish it up today out of a desire to reciprocate the effort you'd put into it. I absolutely couldn't find any archival copy of the two dead links anywhere though. — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 00:38, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for this, Smuckola, and for your attention there too. No, I couldn't find those articles; Highbeam has the Pasadena-Star, but doesn't seem to have that page (I didn't go through every article from that month to check, of course). Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:33, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I think sometimes we just have to let it go, huh? ;) — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 16:28, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Donkey

Hello. I think I've been very clear about the reasons for my reversion of this edit and I certainly have no trouble understanding the sources. The OED has never claimed that its own earliest citation is "the earliest recorded" use of a word. That would be an impossibly ambitious claim because it would require the editors to have read every word of English on record. Another source has an earlier citation and does actually make that claim and as such there is no contradiction at all between the sources, nor can there be any logical doubt that the earliest recorded use is not 1785. I've tried to explain this as clearly as I can. On the subject of your other reversion, "ass" has been largely superseded by "donkey"; it has certainly not been "replaced". "Ass" is still in use in a biblical context ("the ox and the ass"); it was also in common use as an insult in British English until very recently, and is still heard occasionally. Finally, it is still used fairly often simply as an alternative for "donkey" --Lo2u ^{(T • C)} 18:32, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh, and although "arse" and "ass" may have become homophones in most (but not all) dialects of English in North America they are not homophones in most of the rest of the English speaking world. --Lo2u ^{(T • C)} 18:34, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Given that JLAN here has a strong language ability and is a go-to source on what is copacetic in "the rest of the English speaking world," I'd say if he's chopping that bit, it needs to stay chopped. My own view is that your edits exceeded what can be verified in the sources cited, so if you want to find more sources and discuss at the article's talk page, go for it. But don't edit-war on the article itself. Montanabw^(talk) 22:21, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

You offer nothing relevant here and I'm not going to go on repeating myself, except to say an initial edit followed by a reversion several days after you ignored by talk page comment is not edit warring. --Lo2u ^{(T • C)} 05:33, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

You are the one who came over here with your complaints, to which JLAN has so far chosen not to respond. So I'm not going to hijack JLAN's talkpage any further, I have commented at the talk page of the article. Montanabw^(talk) 17:13, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Montanabw! I'm not really clear why this was brought here at all, given that a discussion was already under way at Talk:Donkey; I suggest continuing it, such as it is, at that page. However, I will take this opportunity to say that I have no particular expertise in etymology, and wouldn't really want it to be thought that I do. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:57, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your clarification of the editors to Tendon and Epitenon, it is always reasurring WP's content is regarded as high enough quality to be considered for publication.

In the future, WP:CP is the correct forum for bringing these concerns up, right? Can this be done via Twinkle? --LT910001 (talk) 21:33, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I think so, yes. You can add {{copypaste}} and {{close paraphrasing}} tags with Twinkle, as you did at Tendon, but to be honest I'm not sure how much attention that will attract. If you manually blank the suspect content and list at WP:CP it will definitely get looked at, though, as that board is over-loaded, not necessarily immediately. By the way, if you are satisfied that there are no other problems, you could probably go ahead and remove those tags from Tendon now. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:41, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Apologies

Hello. I'm sorry for the tone of my previous post at Talk:Donkey, which was not really aimed at you at all. I don't think you are "intent" on anything and I don't think you are being "obtuse", though I do think that word applies to attempts, not by you, to close down the argument after a source was actually mentioned ("drop the stick", "end of discussion here..."). --Lo2u ^{(T • C)} 10:40, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

No apology needed, I didn't take any of that personally; but thanks anyway. I'm sure that this will all work out, though, as I've already said, I'm not convinced that it is very important. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:20, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Aqua (the band)

Hi,

I was just on their article and I clicked on the group's official website and I have noticed that the first 4 paragraphs are a word by word copy of the information found on the band's website. At first it looks like it's a copyright violation, but it seems more like what's on their site is actually copied from Wiki, considering it actually contains exactly the same numbers that Wiki used for the verification of the information. This should be looked into as well. Norum 10:58, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Norum! That can happen too. I'll take a look at it and see if I can work it out. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:24, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. :) Norum 13:12, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

ENGVAR

Thanks for your note on my talk page regarding my recent changes to Mondovì. You are quite right about the hyphenation of north-western, per MOS:COMPASS. I stand corrected, and I will be more careful about this in the future.

On the other hand, MOS:CONVERSIONS says, "Where English-speaking countries use different units for the same quantity, follow the 'primary' quantity with a conversion in parentheses: the Mississippi River is 2,320 miles (3,734 km) long; the Murray River is 2,375 kilometres (1,476 mi) long." I noted some time ago that almost all of the articles about Italian population centers lacked conversions from metric (the primary unit) to imperial, and I've recently been adding the conversions. When you reverted my edit to north-western, you also reverted my unit conversion in the first sentence of the lead. I can't be sure whether that was intentional or not. If you have no objection, I will restore the phrase to read "about 80 kilometres (50 mi) from Turin". My best. Finetooth (talk) 16:35, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Of course; that was a careless press of the button on my part, sorry about that. Please do as you suggest. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:09, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Goat breeds of Italy

Template:Goat breeds of Italy has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.

That's a TfD by the same person doing all the page moves. FWIW, note this. Montanabw^(talk) 03:59, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, I know which editor it is – the same whose pointless and misguided crusade against the bird project has resulted in the departure of truly valuable expert editors such as Sabine's Sunbird (note capitalisation!). You'd have thought that crusader would have learnt to sign a talk-page post by now. Anyway, be prepared for the same pointless and misguided crusade against current consensus at all animal breed articles; this stuff is just a warm-up. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:00, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Sometimes it is worth digging in here and there, the bullies need to not win every damn time. The capitalization wars have been ongoing for years, and it's all because WP programming treats Capitals and lower case like different characters, hence the obsession with sentence case in titles instead of title case capitalization. Silly. Montanabw^(talk) 15:50, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

How interesting. You mean that a software change might prevent such wars?--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:12, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Quite possible. I know squat about computer programming, but I remember feeling that the wikipedia default of sentence case article titles was Not. What. I. Was. Taught. In. Grammar. School. (grin) And it drove me nuts the first year or so I was here. I eventually got used to it, but frankly, as with so many other things, I'd love to see wiki be more open to using a manual of style that is akin to one (or more) of the ones used in the real world; I trained mostly to use the Chicago Manual of Style, but there are, of course, others equally valid. But that's just my opinion, and I have no idea where to even start to change that particular issue. Montanabw^(talk) 23:44, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Italics

Uhm sorry, but I think there might be a misunderstanding... Cologne, Milan, Munich, Rome, Bangkok... Using italics in the article's introduction looks like an established convention to me. MOS:FORLANG even recommends that kind of format. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 15:47, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Maybe. But I don't think so, MOS:ETY is quite clear on that. However, do please try to change that consensus if you wish. It seems by the way that Senales is by far the more common name in English for both the valley and the town (cf for example this and this). I'll restore the boldface, but leave it up to you to request a move to the WP:COMMONNAME. There may be several other placenames in the same area that should also be moved for the same reason. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:09, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

No, nothing should be moved, please have a look at WP:NBZ and Wikipedia:Search engine test. Your Google results are extremely flawed, by the way. First of all, you should note that Google searches may report vastly more hits than will ever be returned to the user. Secondly, you should use more reliable search engines like the ngram viewer. Thirdly, you should take into account that a search for Senales will always bring results for both the municipality and the valley, while the German place names disambiguate between Schnals (the municipality) and Schnalstal (the valley). These graphs show quite clearly that Senales and Schnals+Schnalstal are more or less similarly spread. However, all these search findings are completely unrelated to the question, if the numbers enable us to talk about a common English usage as such and as required by WP:NBZ and MOS:FORLANG.

MOS:FORLANG says: Do not boldface foreign names not normally used in English. If names like Roma and Milano don't suffice to that requirement, Senales certainly doesn't either. I leave it up to you to make your case there, there and there. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 16:26, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

June 2014

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Always a good sign

when two reviewers look at the same article at the same time and reach the same conclusion. --S Philbrick(Talk) 20:10, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, great minds indeed! Within moments of each other, too. Best regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:43, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

High-flying pigeons

Thanks for fixing the tag. I've re-declined it because I'm not at all sure that All Caps is the best route to take; I've seen lots of bird articles (and articles on other kinds of animals) moved to caps-less titles recently. See the recent history of Common wood pigeon and Rock dove for a couple of examples. With this in mind, I can imagine the page getting moved back before long, were I to move it as requested. Personally, I think it makes more sense to go with your suggestion, but if everyone else is using few caps, it doesn't seem particularly helpful to move one page that way. Nyttend (talk) 23:05, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

There's a fairly fundamental difference between a bird species such as Rock dove and a breed of fancy pigeon such as the Chistopolian High-flying Pigeon. I am of course aware that there is a recent consensus to lower-case the proper names of all bird species, so I wouldn't have requested such a move if it were comparable. This one is precisely analogous to those discussed at Talk:American Paint Horse. But no matter. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:12, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Massive edit dispute across multiple animal breed articles. Proceed with that knowledge. Montanabw^(talk) 01:37, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Tiger Horse

I'm in the middle of leaving a detailed message on User talk:Tiger Horse Founder to explain my undo. I'm really not sure what that was all about, but there were too many problems even attempt to fix them myself. Meters (talk) 23:21, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I think you made the right call there, for several reasons. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:23, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. It's not my field at all so I was a bit uncertain. There appear to be similar problems (not as bad) with her edits to Ambling. Perhaps you could look at them since your edit history shows that you have some knowledge in the area? I was going to just fix the obvious signing problems, but I didn't want to bury the subject edits. Meters (talk) 23:33, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

I completely reverted everything at Ambling, which is being prepped for a GA run. Montanabw^(talk) 01:56, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, one of us did, anyway :). Thanks to Meters for noticing that. Looking at this again this morning, in the colder light of dawn, I realise that much of the copyvio/ close-paraphrasing has already been removed from Tiger horse, possibly mostly by Montanabw, and that I may have over-reacted there. However, it seems to provide an opportunity to look at sources and perhaps notability at that page. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 07:37, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I'll grant notability issues. I kind of think something that is about three generations removed from crossbreeding really is just a designer crossbred and not yet a "breed," but my view is not a popular one in the US of A. I tried to get Moyle horse dumped once and succeeded, only to have it appear again and that time my RfD failed because someone mentioned it in a breed encyclopedia or two. Yet, years ago, there was another editing "war" over calling ANY of the warmblood "breeds" a breed if they had an open stud book, and they weren't sure that even the Trakehner qualified as a "breeed" because they apparently still allow a minimal amount of TB and Arab breeding (by that standard, even the Appaloosa and the Quarter Horse aren't "breeds" yet) So, per all the other kerfuffles out there, I've sort of given up on any argument about what a "breed" is versus a "type" versus a "landrace." I found my own views were amazingly in the middle of the road (from a worldwide perspective) but the ditches on both sides were filled with more venom than I care to face. I'm only going to dig in at the species level; if someone wants to call it a breed, I'm pretty much saying if it can pass GNG and not just be two farms's private crossbreeding program, then go for it :-P . Montanabw^(talk) 19:27, 18 June 2014

(UTC)

Your POV tag on Frank G. Fahrion

Hello,

I am just a neutral editor passing by and I did a bit of a clean up on the aforementioned page. I also noticed that you have concerns about its neutrality. Do you have any concerns in particular? Arfæst Ealdwrítere (talk) 22:41, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, I definitely should have written something on the talk page. My concern is that it reads as if were written by the US Military. That's not surprising, as that is who it was lifted and copy-pasted from. It's public domain material, so there's no copyright problem there; it is of course still WP:PLAGIARISM, and full of WP:PUFFERY such as "superbly organizing and directing the target and salvage units". I did express some concern at this method of article creation at Talk:Jesse J. Taylor, but received no reply from Dual Freq. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:56, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Up your alley

Per a comment by an editor that he "mainly copy and paste" from other articles here, can you review Easy Goer? I was trying to help this editor clean up "his" writing, but now that I realize he was probably copying verbatim, I don't want to get caught up in a bigger mess. Maybe my cleanup helped eliminate the problem, but as you can see from the edit history of the article, my advice seemed to be falling, for the most part, on deaf ears. (As it so often does, but oh well, that's just something about my charm and personability...) Plag tracker flagged more than just wikipedia here, if that helps. Montanabw^(talk) 22:11, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. I had a quick look, by which I mean quick, and didn't immediately see anything out of the ordinary. An apparently non-encyclopaedic passage like "blended sizzling speed over a mile with comprehensively authentic stamina" does not get any G-hits. Anyway, I see that you've also asked MRG, who is in a class of her own at this sort of thing, so anything I might say carries little weight. One option I might consider is to simply ask. All that jargon is infuriating, but mostly unsourced as far as I can see. By the way, looking at the edit history, I have to say that I did wonder if there had been quite as many editors as there were usernames. I'll try to do something about my over-reaction at Tiger Horse tomorrow, should really have got to it sooner. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:29, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

I went over an AfC he had done up (that had been declined) and it was verbatim copy and paste from the cited sources. I cleaned that up and if he doesn't throw another fit at me like he did at the link above, at least that article will be OK. I hate to open up a CCI on someone, but when they flat out admit to copy and paste, well, sheesh... that plag tracker site is pretty cool as it picked up the obvious, that it was from wikipedia, but also tagged many of the inline sources too. It has a feature where you can click on a source and it will highlight the material from that source. Interesting. Useful. Must remember for the future. No worries on the Tiger horse, fix it at your leisure. Montanabw^(talk) 03:20, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Versus You

Hi,

You have nominated my article for speedy deletion, because of copyright issues but it isn't a direct copy, from somewhere I have to get informations or should I write a Fairytale and I also cannot invent a new language. Ok some parts can be similar but I don't now how to say that differently. Slowly I loose the patience to work on this wiki because everything i do, isn't good enough for anybody. That's the third or fourth time that my article maybe gets deleted. I am at my wit's end. --Irukandji85 (talk) 09:31, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi! The speedy deletion request was declined by Ronhjones, who instead has listed the article at copyright problems for the copying to be sorted out (I think that was a good decision, by the way). It'll probably be looked at in a week or two. Meanwhile, if you want to start rewriting it, you can do so at Talk:Versus You/Temp (that's red now because no-one has started that page); if you do, please leave a note on the article talk page. Please don't copy the existing content to the Temp page. No, you shouldn't write a fairy tale, you should write, in your own words, the plain facts about the band that are reported by independent reliable sources - reliable websites or articles in well-known newspapers and magazines, for example, but not (for most things) any material put out by the band or its members. Each fact you write should have a reference. The references don't have to be in English. If you can't find a reference for a fact, don't put it in the article. If the article doesn't have enough independent references to show that the band is important and has been written about by many different people, it runs the risk of being deleted as not notable. Yes, I know, it isn't easy. Good luck! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:56, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Santa Cecilia Orchestra (Los Angeles)

Thanks so much for whacking the PR out of that article. The recently created Sonia Marie De León de Vega (its conductor) can also use the red pencil. The orchestra is a client of Diálogo Public Relations [11] and I see their heavy hand elsewhere. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Latin Food Fest for background. I've pointed both editors involved to the COI guidelines. Voceditenore (talk) 11:14, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

My pleasure! That article was created as a copyvio, which is why I had it watch-listed. You might like this if you haven't already seen it. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:10, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Yep. I've seen it. Interestingly, like the original creator, the brand new account "contributing" to the article has a similar lack of clue about copyright violation—6 images deleted at Commons and one about to be. Voceditenore (talk) 13:27, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Sonia Marie De León de Vega

A huge thank you for whipping this into shape! I just couldn't face it. I loved your edit summary "this stuff reads as if it were written by some damned publicity agency". It did because it was—more of the heavy hand of Diálogo Public Relations [12]. Alas for them their CEO and their FoodFest are no more. All the best and thanks again. Voceditenore (talk) 17:25, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! I allowed myself a little fun there. Actually I'm not convinced that she and the orchestra each have enough individual notability to justify having an article on both, but I'm going to let someone else worry about that. What sticks in my throat is that the agency probably gets paid based on whether the article stays up or not, rather than on the quality of the content. Hey-ho! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:06, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

edit warring

Hey, Recently I came across a situation with a number of Estonian singers articles, Katrin Siska, Lenna Kuurmaa, Kerli, Luisa Värk and Maarja-Liis Ilus. I was involved in an edit warring with a number of Estonian users. The problem was, all those people were born in Estonia, but before it gained the independence in 1991. So the way I see it, they were still born in the Estonian SSR, which was part of the Soviet Union. But a few users kept reverting it, claiming it should be just listed as Estonia. I was trying to reason with them, but to no avail. I looked at some other people that were born before the fall of the Soviet Union, their place of birth was listed the proper way, as a republic of the Soviet Union. Would it be possible for you to have a look at the issue, please? Norum 17:48, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)Norum, this issue of nation of origin is an ongoing debate across wikipedia. One classic example was the article Franz Kafka, a featured article which arrived at an elegant solution that you may want to look at. Montanabw^(talk) 22:03, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

It is actually written the proper way aboot him. He was a German, born in Prague, at that time it was a part of the Austria-Hungary Empire, but now it is in Czech Republic. It would have been incorrect if it was written that he was born in Czech Republic. And basically that's how they have it written with the above mentioned Estonians. Norum 11:03, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

OK, I took a quick look at Katrin Siska, sorry I didn't do that before. Montanabw's (unspoken) advice is spot-on here - compromise if you can. Other options I can think of are: WP:Third opinion (be sure to mention that there is one brief intervention by a third editor; they may decline it anyway for that reason); an WP:RfC; or the really tough one, which is just to walk away from it. I'm not going to get involved there because I don't care enough about the topic. My take on the "letter of the law" (i.e., WP:OPENPARA) is that it is correct to refer to her as Estonian, as she became notable when Estonia was (definitely) a country, but not correct to give Estonia as her place of birth in the first sentence because "... previous nationalities or the country of birth should not be mentioned in the opening sentence unless they are relevant to the subject's notability". That completely sidesteps the question of whether it was a country when she was born, and might I hope give you a basis on which to try to reach another "elegant solution". Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:04, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Donkeys

Am mostly letting the donkey articles go without taking a real hard look at them because I have other projects to do, but if all those new ones have some consistent problems that routine cleanup will help (such as where I added the equine navbox), ping me. Did notice no convert templates on one; won't insist on 3-way conversion to hands, as the donkey folks don't seem to use them as much, but two-way is a standard courtesy. Also noticed that the donkey breed infobox looks more like a species box, may want to consider whether to make it look more like the horse breeds one. Just a thought. Final thought was whether to add a donkey/asses/mules "task force" to WPEQ, we could then add a parameter to the project template as we do for horse breeds and horse training. I was thinking "longears task force" would be kind of cute and all-inclusive (don't want to dis the mules, after all) But not a front burner issue for me, just running some rambling thoughts up the flagpole. Montanabw^(talk) 21:50, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I'm mostly on top of it; I pre-emptively created one French one as an easier path than cleaning up after someone else (that editor has got the hint, his latest effort is much better). However, there are a couple of things that I've noticed, one easy to fix, the other possibly less so: there's nowhere in particular to link shoulder-stripe to; would you like to make a separate section for it in Primitive markings, which I think you have worked on, for a redirect or three to go to? Secondly, Seal brown (horse) is, as its title implies, all about horses; but if Tsaag is right that "noir pangaré" means seal brown (and I have no doubt that she is), then maybe it should be about donkeys too (I don't know, and don't plan to do the research myself) as that colour is applied to donkey coats also - see e.g., Norman donkey. Still in that general area, the lead of Black (horse) needs a bit of retouching so that it's clear that, as we both know, horses can both be and be called black without necessarily having the true black gene; at the moment, as we found at Catria Horse, there's nowhere to link black to if (a) you don't actually know what genes the horse can carry or (b) you know it is not true black, but it still looks black and is so described; and that is sort of silly. If you felt like fixing any or all of those things I'd be grateful. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 15:29, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

For now, I redirected shoulder stripe to primitive markings, I'd be cool with you adding a bit there on donkeys if you want - their markings are pretty much the same as on horses, though the visibility of the transverse stripe (i.e. shoulder stripe) is more common in the asses than horses. Not speaking French, I don't know if "Noir-pangere" is seal brown or not (after all, the Germans call bay "brown"), but I DO know that seal brown has NOTHING to do with pangaré in terms of genetics, and it clearly is pangaré that we see in donkeys. As for the black horse article, not sure what you want ther (but you can post at the talk page there and I can look at it more specifically) Sure, people might think a dark bay is a black horse, but they are simply wrong. If "E" is modified by "A" the horse is a bay or seal brown, end of story. I agree that people make assessments based on visual observation (some "sunburnt" blacks are similarly mistaken for bays), but if there's a lawsuit over coat color, DNA rules. (FWIW, In the American Arabian horse world, the nonsense and romance over black horses is so extreme that people like to call a dark bay or seal brown horse a "black bay" for advertising purposes, and claim it will "throw black". Those people drive me up a F---ing tree, as do most color breed breeders generally) Montanabw^(talk) 21:25, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Follow up: Looked at Primitive_markings#Other_markings where "vertical stripes" are mentioned; AFAIK, feel free to improve on that and make a new section on transverse striping if you want to, I didn't write that bit, and I've never seen a transverse stripe anywhere except across the withers and shoulders; whoever created that section didn't really work on readability. The Dun central station link is dead, too, and that was a major source. Montanabw^(talk) 21:30, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

One more follow up: Take a look at Black_(horse)#Black_mimics, I think that addresses your concerns there? Montanabw^(talk) 21:46, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

I just don't have time...

But per Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation#Final decision ... the parties of the case were "All parties are reminded to avoid personalizing disputes concerning the Manual of Style, the article titles policy ('WP:TITLE'), and similar policy and guideline pages, and to work collegially towards a workable consensus". I'm looking at the ANI and seeing a good bit of personalization going on ... "As noted below, the complainant here is conflating wildly different kinds of page moves, just because they inolve animals and he's taken an intensely censorious, punitive dislike to me", "That comment looks like the typical venting at other editors for self-satisfaction, that does not help ANI or anyone one iota", "You having a different take on it all of a sudden (one that's gone from tentative to condemnatory in the space of a few hours, perhaps simply because I'm standing up to you and you're looking for an argument?), it does not make for a case of wrongdoing or negligence on my part, and shaking your fists at me about it won't change any of that.", "You can't come in here with an uncertain, questioning attitude about my AT interpretation and three hours later be an ostentatious firehose of certainty and accusation just because I'm not agreeing with you", etc. Normally I'd post this myself but .. I'm about to head out of the house for most of the day. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:12, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this, Ealdgyth! Someone else posted something on these lines quite soon after you wrote it. How are the bishops? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:33, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

The bishops are languishing - I've been very busy in real life ... and I'm waiting on the Wikipedia:OUP subscriptions to get out so I have access to the ODNB again. It's high gardening season here.. I'm busy with gardening... including some treats for my herd... who adore swiss chard for some reason. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:25, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Mailing you now ... Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:29, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Another rodeo, I see

Posted at the ANI. Note my diffs. You were right to raise SMC's behavior and his attacks on you are out of line. He ran off a number of excellent editors at WP:BIRDS and it is time for something to be done. I posted messages at WP ag, birds, dogs, mammals and equine, as these appear to be the main places where there have been past discussions. May also post at cats. Not sure personally if there are other projects that may be interested or not. I don't think a neutrally-worded notification at the project level constitutes canvassing, though given that SMC threatened you, it's probably best that you aren't the one to do it - so I am! As you know, I tend to hold my own in a fight and I happen to think it's high time SMC learns how to seek consensus and how to cooperate with others. Montanabw^(talk) 18:59, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. I wasn't concerned about policy, just about appearing even-handed. A sea change in breed naming conventions will affect cats too, and eventually of course all plant cultivars, but I don't think any of those have been affected yet. They will be ... Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:31, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Free popcorn!

Note my diffs at the ANI, SMC already was renaming cat breed articles, he was originally trying to make everything parenthetical disambiguation, including all the horse breed articles. Then I won a battle over natural disambiguation of those, so he changed his tune and is now warring in the opposite dirction, which Is one reason I jumped on his behavior with the sheep articles - though I'd like to AGF, I must note that he seems to just do these mass moves for their own sake. My own view is that the MOS has good arguments for both natural and parenthetical disambiguation, so it makes little sense to enforce a totally hard and fast rule across all animal articles, one may make more sense than the other in various contexts. (In WPEQ, where we have about 9,000 articles tagged for the horse racing project, an overwhelming number of which are named horses, we may have a unique situation vis a vis other animals). The issue in the dogs project was the "Billy" breed, where there was a breed, and indivually-named animal and of course billy goat, the combo of which, I had to admit, made a good case for parenthetical disambiguation there, though I sure would hate to see (foo breed) as a common disambiguator. Anyway, grab some popcorn and let's watch this show. Montanabw^(talk) 22:20, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. It's not a one-size-fits-all by any means. I'm sure many of the moves were good, as was Sphilbrick's move of Suffolk sheep; and I know that many of them were bad, such as the move of Tacola (sheep) (I do actually think quite carefully about what to call something when I create an article, and I do know what that breed is called). Your move of Romagnolo (donkey) was probably wrong ("made-up names"); and so on. It's not easy, it's not simple, and it can't be fixed by one loose cannon crashing about in the lower decks. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:33, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, the line between natural disambiguation and "made up names" is probably a bit fuzzy and gray (I'm mulling mecate rein and mecate (rein) as the mecate is a type of rein but it's not called a "mecate rein" whereas the animal breeds named after geographic regions such a muddle ... bleech!). I'm not a fan of parenthetical disambiguation though I understand the need for it, but the real point is BRD is normally a beautiful thing, so long as one doesn't boldly change dozens of articles at a time. Wonder if the BRD rule needs some sort of change such as "seek consensus at the relevant project pages before boldly making the same change to more than 5 or 10 articles" :-P Montanabw^(talk) 07:00, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Solomon's sword: Mecate (tack). And yes. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:24, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Had a discussion with someone else elsewhere raising the specter of things like Mecate (equipment) or Mecate (horse equipment, but to be fair to mules, perhaps Mecate (equine equipment). I'm beginning to wonder how hard to fight for WP:PRIMARY on some of this stuff ;-P Montanabw^(talk) 18:26, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Might not be necessary - see here. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:34, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

On a related note, I'm one of the editors (NatureGuy1980) who stopped contributing because of what I perceived as perpetual harassment and bullying (often via filibustering) from SMcC. Rather, I left because such behavior was not reined in. I was alerted what was transpiring here by an editor I know in real-life. The reason I'm commenting here is because a user named John has deleted the evidence he purports to not know the existence of in the current ANI discussion. I reverted his edit that seems an attempt to cover up the evidence, and his response was to threaten to ban me. Since his stance seems to be that anything he doesn't like deserves a banning, I do not wish to engage him directly. He's shown himself to be not trustworthy in my estimation. You may see the thread here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:John#For_the_birds The evidence he has deleted was on the user page for NatureGuy1980. I understand that ad hominem attacks are not allowed, but how is an editor supposed to report bullying if he can't say it's happening? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.223.105.116 (talk) 06:23, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Natureguy1980 or 98.223.105.116! Please excuse me for not replying to this earlier; it didn't seem right to discuss anything but the matter immediately at hand while that ANI discussion was going on. I'm personally extremely sorry that you and other valuable editors feel that they have to leave the project because of a perceived failure to address the behaviour of one particular editor; that shows that something is seriously amiss here. I have no idea how it should be fixed, but I notice that John has mentioned on his talk page the possibility of an WP:RFC/USER. I also notice that he has received some criticism for the actions you mention, and that there is a discussion continuing there. Can I suggest that you join it? The project needs you, and while I'm usually the first to agree that walking away is often the best course in a dispute, this could be one of those times when it isn't. (John, for what it's worth, my own opinion of what went on there is that you were undoubtedly acting in good faith, for what you saw as the right reasons, but that your timing and your comments to Jimfbleak were unfortunate at best). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:30, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Justlettersandnumbers. I posted there. 98.223.105.116 (talk) 18:44, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Precious

animal breeds
Thank you for quality articles on animals, their breeds, including lists and templates, such as List of French horse breeds, for Category:Music theory articles by importance, for your modest "Yep, that's me! Abbreviates to JLAN.", for conservative caution regarding copyright, and for courage, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:47, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

That is a very beautiful sapphire, and I am honoured to have it on my page. Thank you, Gerda! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:58, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

The stone comes with a history (photographer, article), that we share. - Did you know that I translated the Invisible Rail? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:57, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

The mess behind Desperate Journey

After I discovered a copy-viol at Desperate Journey, I notified two administrators and the original editor who may have "close paraphrased" the text from an outside source (a TCM article). First, all my work on a re-write was blanked, and the information in a template was that a temp article was available. I then re-created the article there only to have it blanked again and this time, was templated for copying within Wikipedia as if I was the one who created this mess. I have now placed my work in a second temp space Talk:Desperate Journey/Temp/Temp but have been advised that I left no attribution in the first place resulting in my being templated as a copy-viol. What kind of attribution is necessary as there was a clear record of the original copy-viol on the talk page of the article and all my work on temp pages has an edit history. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 11:59, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Copyright Issue of Baari Tar Bangla

Hi, after your indication of copyright violation of the content, I made a significant change in the content . The new content does not violate any copyright. But you have deleted it also without checking. Souravdas1 (talk) 14:25, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry, I did check, and decided that the content was still uncomfortably close to the source. That is why I listed it at WP:CP. Someone else will now look at it, usually within a week or two. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:34, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

A new version of the article is written at this temporary page. Souravdas1 (talk) 20:03, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

I saw. As I said, someone will probably look at it within a week or two. Unfortunately that noticeboard is over-loaded. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:07, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Credo

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